


Under the Wide Sky

by Guede



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Blow Jobs, Culture Shock, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Outdoor Sex, Political Alliances, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, Scars, Topping from the Bottom, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:28:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: In the land of his father, Arthur finds both peace and war.Following real history in that Rome only took a one-time levy of soldiers from Sarmatia, and didn’t continue to draft them into the Roman army.
Relationships: Arthur Castus/Guinevere, Arthur Castus/Lancelot, Galahad/Tristan (King Arthur 2004), Guinevere/Gawain
Comments: 17
Kudos: 21





	1. Prologue: Travelers

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LJ in 2005. This attempts to be true to the time period, but aside from the note in the summary, is not necessarily true to actual historical events.

She was undoubtedly one of the finest women ever to walk the earth. Long dark brown hair the color of rich soil, lithe and shapely body outlined wonderfully by her trousers, and a face like a drinking dream. And better yet, she was slapping a Roman.

Given how many of them were crawling around the place, Lancelot had only expected to be in town for as long as it took to buy supplies and catch the news, but upon seeing that beauty, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to stay long enough to see the outcome.

“Fucking cunt!” roared the Roman—legionary, nothing special, said his unadorned armor. He was a big brute, but slow, and that showed especially well when she deftly sidestepped his blow to let his own momentum send him face-first into the dirt.

The marketplace populace laughed their full, and Lancelot laughed with them. He was still laughing when, while trying to catch her eye to pass along his admiration and maybe-invitation, he saw other soldiers approaching behind her. Their faces were grim and their arms were bent as if reaching to their hips, which quickly sobered Lancelot. He put his hand on the saddle horn and mounted, starting to turn away before the inevitable quarrel grew to encompass him; she was gorgeous, but this wasn’t ground on which he could win, and there were other sheep in the fold that would require less drastic methods to impress them.

It seemed today was the day for strangers, for the first thing Lancelot saw upon redirecting himself was a man, half-a-head taller than nearly everyone else, striding towards the woman. He was broad-shouldered, but built more on the lean lines of a fast horse than on those of a bull, and he had eyes so green Lancelot could see the color even with several yards separating them. His dress was a curious mixture of Roman and Sarmatian and something else, and his face was just as striking as the woman’s had been. Though it had an unusually serious cast to it…

Someday his curiosity was going to be his undoing, Lancelot snorted to himself. He turned his horse back around and watched as the man walked right up to the soldiers attempting to arrest the woman. The stranger said a few things that Lancelot wasn’t near enough to catch, but whatever it was, it made the Roman officer turn white and quickly call off his men. As for the woman, she haughtily shrugged off the soldier holding her arm and prowled to the man’s side, fingering a dagger hilt. He smiled a little, glint of white, and murmured something that made her roll her eyes but back down. Then they disappeared into the staring crowd, which went back about its business slowly, but too quickly for Lancelot to see where the couple were heading.

“Probably back on the boat for civilization,” he chuckled under his breath, finally departing himself. They certainly weren’t natives, and the only foreigners that ever seemed to stay very long in Sarmatia were the occasional suicidal merchant and the Romans. Everyone else dropped in for the seasonal trading congregations and then left as soon as possible, which was as it should be.

Damned Roman bastards and their damned armies—supposedly they were only here to guard against border-crossing raiders, but anyone with eyes could see they were getting ready for another stab at conquering Sarmatia.

Well, they could try. They could, and then it would be seen whether the sons and the grandsons had learned anything from their forefathers’ errors. Because the Romans weren’t going to settle for another half-victory, and the Sarmatians had had their full of condescending foreigners holding swords over their heads. When the war came, it’d be everyone doing everything and anything. It was a surprisingly dark thought.

“And I’m souring my own mind.” Irritated with himself, Lancelot tapped the pace faster and cleared the edge of the town within a few moments. There wasn’t any point in lingering on the Romans until he had to; that was as bad as being defeated by them on the battlefield. He had more pleasant things on which to think, like whether the man or the woman would’ve been more amenable. She had looked to have a good strong arm, but he certainly hadn’t gotten the muscles shifting beneath his clothes from sitting around in taverns…

…and those were hoofbeats behind Lancelot. He checked the sun—well into the afternoon, but not anywhere near evening. “Since when did bandits rise early enough to see the sun set?” he asked, casually glancing over his shoulder.

Three. Two with bows—he’d have to wait for them to get a little closer—and one now pulling his sword free, a serviceable but worn-looking blade. He apparently was acting as leader. “Since your tribe stole five mares and a cousin of mine,” he rasped.

Oh, for…Lancelot tried not to look too annoyed. He obligingly reined to a stop, absently sliding his hand down his thigh and then under to grab the long knife strapped to the saddle there. “It wasn’t me. And I have too many damned cousins to keep track of, so you can’t expect me to know what they’re all up to. Shouldn’t you be discussing this matter with them?”

“When you’re right here?” the other man said. The archers flanking him stretched their bows that last inch needed for shooting. “Seems less trouble to just—”

Lancelot slammed his leg into the side of his horse, sending it into an abrupt wheel, and threw the dagger. He heard it _thonk_ into flesh and then felt a thin burn go flying past his neck: arrow one. Arrow two had gone completely awry, thus leaving him the opening to charge. Which he did, yanking out his sword as he did.

He ran it so close that his and the archer’s stirrup leathers scraped each other, ducking the man’s sword, and then whirled to come up the other side before the man could turn to face him. The blade went into a shocked face, turned it to gory red, and was pulled out by the horse’s momentum as it kept going forward. That put Lancelot’s back to the other two, which was always a bad idea. So he hooked a leg over the saddle horn and twisted around to throw his other sword, which neatly cleaved the second archer’s skull just as he was letting off another arrow—it grazed over the rump of Lancelot’s horse, spooking it.

“Damn it—not now—” He yanked at the reins, trying to swing its head around, and then he registered the high whistle of a sword swinging too damned near. Lancelot didn’t have the room to duck completely, so he’d have to take a blow on the shoulder—

\--or not. His stallion stopped bucking just as the third man, an arrowpoint sticking from his eye, toppled from his horse. The body fell in a welter of blood and spasming limbs, splattering the legs of Lancelot’s horse, and the contrary creature inquisitively poked its muzzle at it.

“Oh, now you’re not scared,” Lancelot muttered, dragging it around to face whoever he now needed to thank. “I am _never_ borrowing a horse from Galahad again. Flighty master, flighty…”

“So you _can_ fight,” called the woman from the marketplace, now mounted atop a magnificent charger. Her smile was wide and challenging, and not exactly in a pleasant way. She also had a longsword in hand; there was a bow on her saddle, but it was firmly strapped down. Two heavily-laden packhorses trailed behind her.

Not her, but Lancelot wasn’t about to irritate her even more by looking away. At least, not until he got his other sword back. He carefully trotted his stallion over to the other two corpses and leaned down to rip free his second blade. “I can. You seemed to have the situation well in hand before, and I hate to interrupt a woman when she’s—”

“About to be publicly assaulted?” The accent in her voice was marked, but pretty to listen to if one ignored the way its words cracked about the ears.

Well, if she was always going to be so touchy, especially to a man she’d just met, she was certainly off the list of possibilities. Life was short and Lancelot didn’t see any reason to make it worse than it already could be. “Then I’m doubly obliged to your selfless generosity…”

“Guinevere.” She rode a little closer so he could watch her _assess_ him, as if he were a beast for sale. And then she grinned mockingly when he started to bridle. But instead of fraying his temper any further, she simply waved a hand over her shoulder. “Not my selfless generosity. I would’ve left you, like you left me.”

“If one is to leave another, I believe they have to have arrived together in the first place,” Lancelot snapped. He wiped off his swords with quick, rough movements and then resheathed them before he saw at what she was gesturing.

Her companion, riding towards them on one of the best pieces of horseflesh Lancelot had ever seen. He had a bow in his right hand, and he’d unwrapped his cloak enough for Lancelot to see that not only that, but the armor beneath was Roman as well. Lancelot bit down on his tongue and wrapped his hands around the reins, trying to fight the rising burn of humiliation and fury.

“He’s not.” When he looked over, Guinevere had a secret half-smile on her face. Her eyebrow made a delicate arch over it, adding to the sense of teasing. “Not a drop of Roman blood in him. Though he was born a citizen of that city.”

“Very reassuring.” In truth, it was, and surprisingly so, but Lancelot wasn’t about to let her know that. “If your friend has any sense, he’ll wear something else besides a Roman cuirass when touring the countryside. It’s not a welcome sight.”

“Nor to me,” she quietly admitted, something old and red flitting over her face. Then it cleared and she was all jeering again. “But it does speed up how long it takes for our passes to be cleared by the local army. A retired general’s still a general.”

And that slewed Lancelot around to look hard at her, and not at the not-Roman Roman nearly upon them. “General?”

“She’s exaggerating. I was a cavalry commander,” said the man, throwing a lowering glance at Guinevere. She ducked her head in the appropriate shamefaced demeanor, but somehow Lancelot doubted its veracity. But he didn’t have time to think on it, because the man was riding up with steady gaze on him. Coming from those eyes—such an unusual color in this land—it was unnerving. “Are you all right?”

“Well enough. Cavalry, then. With the Romans.” Up close, the man looked even better, but Lancelot was a little too busy being wary to really notice. Much. Well, he should’ve been too busy, but…once in a while, Gawain would lose his temper long enough to categorize all of Lancelot’s failings, and once in a great while, Lancelot would acknowledge that Gawain was mostly accurate. Especially about that one.

Guinevere was looking back and forth between them, and she seemed to find something incredibly amusing. It irked Lancelot, because usually he was the one in that position. “He might as well have been general, if they’d ever gotten around to making it official. He was running Britain, more or less.”

The man flinched and muttered something to Guinevere, which made her sulk a bit. Then he slowly turned to Lancelot, cautious and…oddly guilty, though his gaze didn’t drop like another man’s would. “I fought for the Romans, yes. My grandfather and father both did—they turned it into a family tradition.”

And Lancelot had to stare, because they had been speaking one of the polygot trade languages before, but just now the man had spoken in Lancelot’s tongue, with a perfect accent. “You’re…you’re from the knights that were sent to Britain.”

“I’m Arthur,” the man said by way of affirmative. He reached over and touched a long bundle on the back of one of the packhorses. “I’ve come to bury my father’s ashes with his people, not to make war.”


	2. Homecoming

Sometimes Gawain was very, very glad that Lancelot hadn’t been born a Roman. And sometimes he wondered how the man had survived so long.

He glanced at the couple Lancelot had brought back, then grabbed the other man by the arm and dragged him behind the nearest tent. “Are you insane? We’re trying to organize alliances and you invite a Roman here? Why don’t you just ride into their garrison and spread out our plans for them?”

“He’s not really Roman. He’s only one on sufferance.” It was a weak protest, and Lancelot knew it, to judge by the way he wouldn’t look at Gawain.

No—on second check, it became apparent Lancelot wasn’t looking at Gawain because the man was unstrapping his cuirass, showing only a thin shirt beneath it. Gawain pinched the bridge of his nose and smacked Lancelot. “On sufferance? What’s that supposed to mean? Whose sufferance?”

“Ask Guinevere. She was starting to explain, and then we got here,” Lancelot muttered, rubbing at the side of his head. He shot Gawain an underhanded look, then glanced in the direction of the woman. She was eying the people slowly surrounding them with a mixture of curiosity and lofty detachment, which seemed vaguely familiar. “Look, he’s half-Sarmatian, and his great-grandfather came from my tribe. I’ll just take him around and get his father’s ashes buried, and then we’ll send him back. It might even help—he’d see that no, _of course_ we aren’t mobilizing and he’ll pass that on to the Roman authorities.”

“You’ll take him around.” For a moment, Gawain just stared at the sky and asked it why he got saddled with ridiculousness like this. Then he shrugged it off and reminded himself that he was going to be stuck with it till he pushed all the way through it, and since he wasn’t a masochist, he’d best get moving. “What’s the other half?”

Lancelot was sneaking glances at the man again, who did look much more at-home without the telltale armor. In fact, he’d already struck up what seemed like a vigorous but civil conversation with one of the elders, which was slightly reassuring. Knights were a bit like goats—the older they grew, the nastier and trickier they got—so if the man could charm Gorlois, then it might be all right. “Briton. Name’s Arthur. Did you see his eyes?”

On the other hand, even if the man turned out to be harmless, Lancelot certainly wasn’t. “I’m sure you’ve looked at them enough for both of us,” Gawain snorted.

“Oh, for—I just met him today; I don’t even know if he’s inclined that way.” Another glare sent at Gawain, as if Lancelot had ever managed to kill anyone with looks alone. Though he’d earned something of a reputation for killing because of looks…which was why Gawain’s stomach was still twisting itself in knots.

Bristling like a wet cat, Lancelot stalked off a few paces, then whirled and came back to hiss in Gawain’s face. “Look, the entire way back here we spent talking about different horse-brands, and how we make cheese here, and if there’s such a thing as free will. That is not what a man bent on war talks about. You’d do better to worry about Galahad, but no—he goes with the delegation to the eastern tribes and brings back a knife-happy hawk-kisser, and you think it’ll help improve his character.”

Gawain just grinned, because he was looking over Lancelot’s shoulder. There Tristan was standing, a thoughtful expression on his face and a ruffled hawk on his shoulder. That was it. Guinevere and Tristan…same attitude.

“What’s so—” Then Lancelot understood and dropped his head into his hand. “Which one?”

“The knife-happy one.” Tristan casually walked past Lancelot’s wince and tossed something to Gawain: a worked-gold token. Another representative was nearing the camp, which meant they needed to get the Romans—Britons—whatever those two were—out of sight. “Bercilak wants to speak with both of you.”

Lancelot abruptly straightened, daring Gawain to comment on whatever snap decision he’d just made. “Well, he’ll have to make do with Gawain. I’m owing a visit to the cousins.”

Before Gawain could actually comment, the other man had pushed past Tristan—ducking the lunge of an irate hawk—and was heading towards Arthur and Guinevere. Eyebrow raised, Tristan looked after Lancelot while calming his hawk, then towards Gawain for an explanation. Which Gawain would’ve been happy to give, if it wasn’t so absurd and if Lancelot hadn’t just dropped placating elders in Gawain’s lap. As quick-tempered as Lancelot could be, he was also more quick-witted and subtle and thus did better at that. Not to mention he ranked higher as well, so he was shirking his responsibilities _again_.

“He also owes Galahad a horse,” Tristan said. “His isn’t that lamed.”

Startled, Gawain gave him a sharp look, but Tristan’s smooth face betrayed no secrets, and certainly not the one of how he always managed to know what people were thinking. “Somehow I’ve a feeling that you already stole it back.”

He didn’t get an answer to that, but Tristan did grin as he turned to watch Lancelot chivvy Arthur away from the discussion with Gorlois, which didn’t look to please that hoary old warrior one bit. It must have been an interesting topic, since normally Gorlois’ range of words didn’t extend past the best ways to kill someone in a given situation.

“Lancelot has guests,” Gawain sighed, giving up on that for now. He didn’t have the time to worry about it nor the rank to make Lancelot send them away, so he’d just have to trust that the man would be intelligent and politic. The first Lancelot always was, but the second was a little more spotty. “The man was some kind of military commander in Britain.”

“That’s far.” And that was a surprising thing to say, since Gawain had absolutely no idea where Britain was. Apparently Tristan’s knowledge of the land was more expansive than Gawain had figured. “So you think Galahad needs to improve his character.”

Most of the time, Gawain didn’t mind Tristan’s perpetual deadpan because he could see the man’s actions and read his intent from those. In addition, Galahad might’ve been more prone to jump the horse too soon than even Lancelot, but he wasn’t an idiot when it came to judging men, and he seemed to like Tristan, so…Gawain used that as a benchmark for measuring the man. But occasionally that lack of outward emotion could make things very awkward. Like now, when Gawain couldn’t tell whether Tristan was amused, irked, or offended for Galahad’s sake.

“Do you?” was what Gawain finally settled on. It was a reasonably neutral response, and it put the burden of criticism on Tristan.

The other man flicked a glance at Gawain. His lips twitched upward and he started to move off almost in the same moment, so Gawain nearly missed it. “Only his temper,” Tristan dryly answered.

Gawain laughed, both in good humor and in relief. It kept him from noticing how irritated he was with the new complications right up until the delegation rode in.

* * *

From the main camp to his—second? Third? Lancelot never could remember—cousin’s outlier was an easy two hours’ ride or a fast one-hour one. Since it was warm out and Arthur had conveniently pulled open his collar to show a nice collarbone and chest, Lancelot opted for a lazy walking trot that allowed for conversation. His little burst of temper had stuck him with these two, so he might as well get to know them.

In all honesty, he’d gone to Gawain trying to figure out how to get rid of them, but he hadn’t expected Gawain to blame _him_ for everything. It wasn’t as if he made Arthur shoot that man—and there was another intertribal grudge Lancelot was going to have to bother with now—and it certainly wasn’t as if he liked having to owe his life to Arthur. And anyway, Arthur did have Roman associations, but his father’s blood demanded he at least get a fair hearing. Which was in Lancelot’s realm and not Gawain’s, given from which tribe Arthur was descended. But no, Gawain had listened partway and then had started scolding Lancelot like a mother and a reckless child, and that had just set the wind up Lancelot’s back.

…so Lancelot did have a bit of a contradictory streak. As long as he knew about it, it couldn’t wreck too much havoc with his life.

“…river?”

“Hmm? Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” Lancelot shook himself back to attention in time to see Arthur watching him with patient curiosity, and Guinevere rolling her eyes. Arrogant bitch. If Gawain had wanted to kick her out, Lancelot wouldn’t have had a problem with that.

Arthur ran a hand around the back of his neck, then pulled it down to rub the sweat he’d collected between his fingers. The movement pulled his shirt sideways a little, just enough for Lancelot to glimpse the tip of a scar. “If we’re not in a hurry, and it’s not a…problem, would you mind if I stopped to wash in the river?”

The short pause before Lancelot’s answer was needed because he had to debate whether fate had decided to hate him or love him for the day. Then he mocked himself for even needing to question that and just took what was offered. “Why would it be a problem?”

“Oh, property rights, bad water—take your pick. It’s enough of a problem in other places that it’s usually prudent to ask,” Guinevere interrupted. She was already kicking heels into her horse’s sides and heading for the river, about a hundred yards to their left. There was a nice secluded copse of trees around a small bend in it, which apparently suited her fine enough so that, her words aside, she was willing to risk it.

“We’re on my tribe’s land, and I don’t see any herds pissing upstream, so no. Not a problem. Though I am wondering why you need to wash; you don’t look as if you need it.” Which was the truth, but Lancelot needed to teach his tongue the meaning of not looking too closely at a gift horse. He prayed he hadn’t just offended some weird foreign sensibility of Arthur’s.

Thankfully, he hadn’t: Arthur smiled a little ruefully, which looked good on him, and turned his horse so he could catch the leads to the packhorses that Guinevere threw at him. “The garrison commander offered me use of his bath, but I’d just spent two weeks on a ship and I wanted to get some fresh air. Which I’ve now got, and I can smell those two weeks on me.”

“Bath? Oh, right—you Romans have that obsession with it.” It was meant to be mildly mocking, but Lancelot’s hatred of Rome bled out a little faster than he could block it off. He drew in a sharp breath and started to add a mitigating something, but then stopped. Seeing Arthur’s reaction might actually be useful knowledge later.

And Arthur’s reaction was a flinch and a downcast look as he clearly understood everything Lancelot had accidentally said and had deliberately not said. For several long moments, they rode side-by-side in silence.

When Arthur spoke again, he did so in a measured, low tone as steady as the gaze he had on Lancelot. “I’ve lived too long and seen too much to tell you that Rome is good. But parts of her are—were—and for a long time I believed I was fighting for those. I can’t tell you she hasn’t left her traces on me, but I hope you’ll judge me by the whole and not by the part.”

Something about his sincerity made Lancelot want to look aside and blink hard, as if he’d just looked at the sun and needed to squeeze away the burn. “You don’t talk like a Sarmatian.”

“Nor a Briton, nor a Roman, according to Guinevere, and I lived in those places.” Arthur drew a deep breath and stared up at the sky. The air around Lancelot cooled quite a bit. “Before this, the closest I ever got to here was in the stories passed down from my great-grandfather.”

“Well, what do you think? Not a real city in sight, none of your comforts of civilization…” They were at the edge of the grove now, so they dismounted and led in their mounts. Arthur took a moment to tether his horses besides Guinevere’s, then leaned against a tree and stretched out his legs while Lancelot tried not to stare too obviously. The man wasn’t inclined that way, damn it—if he was, there was no way he couldn’t know what kind of an effect he was having. “…and the natives are all ‘stinking barbarians’…”

That made Arthur flash a smile at Lancelot, just before the man stripped off his shirt. “You smell fine to me. And so far, you’ve been more considerate than many civilized men I know.”

Lancelot did his best Tristan-impression as he calmly noted the scars and the well-developed muscles. On second thought, bathing might be an idea worth adopting, if it always got people to disrobe this carelessly. “You’re welcome. Though it’s really more your doing, since you kept that man from killing me.”

“You almost sound as if you didn’t want me to shoot him,” Arthur said, amused. He carefully folded up his shirt and shoved it into a saddlebag, then moved to the packhorses to get another. One particularly long scar started somewhere beneath his waistband and spiraled around his back to end halfway up his left ribs.

There were trees, so Lancelot took advantage of them and leaned against one, crossing his arms over his chest. No point in being more uncomfortable than he had to be. “Oh, no, I’m quite happy to be alive and not nursing a slashed shoulder. It’s only a little…well, you…”

“…were in the Roman army, and members of that aren’t very welcome in Sarmatia right now. It must be awkward feeling grateful to one. Though if it makes a difference, I don’t consider you as owing me any kind of debt.” The spare shirt seemed to be well-tucked into the bags, which forced Arthur to twist around and dig. Aside from making his back-muscles ripple and smooth in a soothingly rhythmic manner, it also moved him into the dappled light so Lancelot could see a set of odd-looking scars on Arthur’s arm.

They were rather short and straight, leftovers of some incision, but a fight didn’t seem to be a likely explanation given that they were all parallel to each other. In fact, it looked as if they’d been done deliberately…

…and Lancelot very much needed to stop spacing out. He looked at the tree against which he was supposed to be leaning, then to the hand that had snapped around his wrist. A final glance at Arthur showed a surprisingly tense face, with something grim staring back at Lancelot. Then Arthur blinked, came back to himself and looked apologetic as he let go. “Sorry. I didn’t…”

“What are those?” When in embarrassment, pretend it was done on purpose and brave it out—that was the general plan of action that Lancelot followed. Usually it worked. At the least, it kept him from thinking about things like what Arthur’s hand had felt like.

“Bloodletting cuts. It’s…our surgeons do that to bring a fever down.” The memory slid a black mask over Arthur’s face, then shrunk back as he turned. Guinevere was calling him.

And Guinevere was also walking towards them, wringing out her long coil of hair, with her clothes clinging to her damp body. For a moment, it nearly made Lancelot forget about her nasty tongue.

“Your turn,” she said to Arthur. Her mouth was grinning, but her eyes were solemn and quick as they searched his face. Then they glanced over Lancelot and she made a little knowing snort, which sorely tempted Lancelot to find out whether she did know how to use that sword.

Arthur smiled back at her, all fondness and appreciation, but the shadow still lingered around his eyes. So whatever it’d been, Guinevere had been a part of it as well.

Lancelot was still thinking on that when Arthur walked off, coincidentally in the same direction that Lancelot was looking. And that was the truth, and so Guinevere had no right to laugh at him like that. “Something amusing, lady?”

“Don’t use a title unless you’re going to respect its meaning.” She was bent slightly at the waist so her hair hung free, fingers swiftly fingercombing out the snarls. After a moment, her hand went behind her to rummage in a saddlebag; it soon produced a finely-worked bone comb, which she applied to separating her hair into three pieces. “It is a good view from behind, isn’t it? And frontwise, and—”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re encouraging me.” Shame that calling her into a fight, even if it was just enough of a brawl so that he could give her a richly-deserved spanking, would probably upset Arthur. Little that Lancelot knew of the man, he could already tell that Arthur had one peculiar code of honor. “Or are you one of those…free women that don’t mind a crowded bed?”

The three pieces were being deftly braided into a neat plait, which Guinevere looped over her shoulder as it grew in length. She shot a look over it that was half-vixen, half-steel. “Free to me means that I do what I please, when I please, with no one to gainsay me. But I suppose such thoughts are a little too deep for you.”

“You do like making your assumptions, don’t you,” Lancelot retorted, making his voice silky and seething. With one stride, he was next to her; he propped his arm against the tree so he could lean over her as well. “Easy to talk.”

“Hard to do.” She tied off the braid and abruptly flung her head back so her swinging hair nearly whiplashed Lancelot across the face. Then she was stepping forward before he’d leaned back from his dodge, pressing the advantage. If she hadn’t been grating so badly on his temper, he would’ve found it admirable.

Guinevere held up her arm and pulled down the sleeve to show the same pattern of scarring that Arthur had had. She let Lancelot have his eyeful, then elbowed him aside so she could go back to digging in her saddlebags. “Britain’s a full Roman province—you aren’t that yet. So don’t talk to me of freedom till you’ve lost all of it—you don’t know till then.”

“You hate Romans, and yet you ride with one?” Lancelot mused, pacing clear of her. He was absently gazing around when he came upon the break in the underbrush and the clear view of Arthur in the water.

He must have found a gravel shallow, for the water barely came up to his waist, and occasionally it would dip below his hipbone as he bent over to rinse out his hair. That long scar on his back ended about mid-hip; it was ragged and raised and dull pinkish, and Lancelot wondered what on earth could leave that kind of mark.

“Arthur was a Roman by choice, and now he’s only a Roman because he hasn’t had long enough to learn to be something else. But even before, he wasn’t really one. He _cared_ about people as people.”

When Arthur straightened up, he threw his head all the way back. His mouth drifted open and his shoulders went down, jerkily, as if he didn’t relax so deeply that often. “A saint?” Lancelot asked.

“Hardly, though he used to be Christian, too. He made war on us while we had the strength to rebel, and he was the worst enemy we’d ever had. But then the fever rose in the marshes and spread, faster than anyone could send word, and he took us all in. He gave us doctors and gave us shelter and gave us good burials, even when Rome told him to stop.”

Something smacked Lancelot’s shoulder; Guinevere danced away from his return blow, casting a scornful look back at him. But that was soon replaced by a smile that was almost sad, though its edge remained sarcastic. “So now Britain’s barely got enough people to survive, let alone rebel. And I’m here instead of there, and he’s here instead of in Rome.”

“You’re being very…familiar, considering we only met today.” Irritated with her and with himself, Lancelot pointedly returned to his horse and occupied himself with checking the strained tendon in its right foreleg. That was almost back to normal…still, he should probably trade it for a younger one once they’d gotten to his cousin’s.

“I thought you might like to know where things lie. Or don’t,” she replied, tone suspiciously careless. Guinevere looked at Arthur, who had finished and was coming back through the trees, then at Lancelot. “What’s your cousin like?”

Lancelot eyed her the same way he would a cornered bear. “Owein? Looks a bit like me, but his personality isn’t nearly as sparkling.”

“You mean a nicer temper? I might enjoy meeting him, then.” She put special emphasis on the word ‘meeting,’ and then laughed when she saw how Lancelot couldn’t help taking a second look at Arthur.

In this case, Lancelot deserved that. Face burning, he untied his horse and remounted so he wouldn’t have to look at either of them.

* * *

“Where have you been?” Galahad didn’t bother looking; by now, he knew that when the back of his neck prickled, it was just Tristan softstepping around in hopes of scaring him senseless. Bastard had such a bad sense of humor—it was anyone’s guess why Galahad put up with him.

Then again, Tristan did have a nice way of easing down so his warmth and pressure rolled gradually into Galahad. Good thing, because lying on a hill just above the Roman garrison was not a good place to…yelp like a puppy, as Gawain had put it. Someday Galahad was going to have his revenge for that, and it was going to be absolutely delicious.

“Lancelot has guests. A Briton woman and a half-Briton, half-Sarmatian knight who soldiered for the Romans.” Tristan laid his head down and peered through the tall grass at the tiny men moving about in the valley below, eyes immediately going to the long wagon train being let into the fort. The Romans were gathering an unusual amount of supplies, given that winter was still months away.

And a knight fighting for the Romans? At first, Galahad was about to comment on Lancelot’s lack of sense, but then he recalled something. “Britain? So a descendent of the fifty-five hundred that were exiled?”

That earned him a vaguely impressed look, which in turn earned Tristan an elbow in the ribs.

“Yes, I do listen to the news, so stop looking at me like that. And half-Briton…what was the name…oh, right. Was he called Arthur?” Galahad muttered.

This time, Tristan graced him with a full twist to stare him in the face.

Galahad grinned, pleased with himself and fully deserving it, and nipped at Tristan’s nose, which made Tristan’s eyelashes flutter as he briefly allowed his confusion to show. “And I listen to the marketplace gossip, which is sometimes useful. He’s supposed to be a crack cavalry commander and a legend—some of the Roman cavalry officers were talking over battles he won in Britain. They were wondering why Rome would let someone who actually knew what he was doing retire, instead of sending him here to rescue them.”

“We keep smashing their cavalry for reasons besides bad leadership,” Tristan observed. After a moment, he ducked in and nibbled at the underside of Galahad’s jaw.

So he did have more than one good point. Too bad that they were supposed to be doing something else, and that Galahad’s sense of self-preservation was such a loud screamer. He nuzzled at Tristan for a moment longer before backing off and pointing out the new bad news. “Maybe not now. See?”

“Yes.” The slight lightening of Tristan’s expression disappeared.

The cover on one of the wagons had come loose and was flapping; a Roman soldier finally noticed and hastily tied it down, but not before Tristan had seen what Galahad had been morosely staring at for the past quarter-hour. Armor large enough for a horse. Someone had finally pried a heavy-cavalry unit loose from elsewhere in the Empire, and now it was coming to face them. That meant the Romans could finally match the Sarmatian cavalry in terms of armament, and badly led or not, the casualty rates were going to go up.

“Maybe you should’ve stayed east,” Galahad murmured, mostly to himself. “You didn’t need to come; we asked you to guard our backs from the far east while we handled Rome here.”

And even Galahad still didn’t know why Tristan had decided to ride back with him; true, that hunt had been…memorable, but…

“And maybe I’ve killed plenty of raiders, but not nearly enough Romans,” Tristan countered. Something in his eyes went soft, but it could’ve been a trick of the light since he kissed Galahad so fast and hard that Galahad didn’t have the time to make sure of what he had seen.

“You know, it’s when you say things like that that you make Gawain nervous for me.” But impending war and worried cousins aside, Galahad was glad Tristan had come west.

* * *

Guinevere was up to something. And Arthur was more than a little afraid of what the answer to his inevitable question was going to be, but he squared his shoulders and asked it anyway. If she was going to turn the world upside-down, he’d best have advance notice. Even if it didn’t help him prevent it, at least he wouldn’t feel guilty about _not_ having asked when he clearly should have. “Guinevere?”

They had arrived at a much smaller camp, which was tucked in a v-shaped shallow created by two hills running together at an angle. Just as in everywhere else in this land, they’d received plenty of curious, wary looks, but Lancelot had gone in ahead and had told his relatives…something reassuring. Enough so to get Arthur and Guinevere whisked into a spare tent, where they were currently unpacking. “Hmm?” Guinevere said, debating which knife to stick under her pillow.

There wasn’t really much to unpack, so Arthur had long since finished and was now sitting on the other end of the single bed—he’d have to sleep on the ground, he supposed—watching one side of the tent. It was twitching a little. He switched to Briton. “Are you planning to kill him or sleep with him?”

That brought her head up and shocked her face frozen, but only for a moment. Then she was snickering at him. “Who, our handsome and intrepid guide? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“About which?” Arthur pulled off his boot and dug in it till he found the pebble that’d been paining him for the last hour. He rolled it between his fingers, getting a feel for its shape and heft, and then flicked it at the shaking wall. On the other side, someone let off a panicked giggle, and the sound of small running feet soon followed.

Something brushed over Arthur’s cheek, startling him. He looked back just in time to see Guinevere almost reveal a wistful expression. “We’ve been here barely two days and you’re more relaxed than I ever saw you in Britain,” she murmured, flipping her chosen dagger beneath the pillow. “No, don’t look serious again—you should smile like that more.”

And Arthur did try, but now that he was consciously attempting to, his face felt stiff and sluggish, determined to stay the way it was. Only when he acknowledged the sour humor in it did he manage to smile, but it wasn’t in the manner that he had before. “I can’t remember the last time I had so few things to worry about. No battles to plan, no wounds to bind, no graves to dig…there’s only finding a place for the ashes, and worrying about what atrocities you’re planning on committing.”

“Not me,” Guinevere snorted, flopping down on the high pile of furs on the low cot. This particular tribe of Sarmatians had been in contact with the more settled peoples around them long enough to have adapted some customs from them, it seemed. “I’m discreet.”

Arthur merely looked at her while putting his boot back on.

A strand of hair had escaped from her braid and was now dangling over her face; she blew out a short, quick breath that made the strand whip derisively at him. Occasionally Guinevere reverted to the childhood she mostly hadn’t had—it was how Arthur could tell she was happy, and so he was always more glad than not to see a sign of it. “More so than Lancelot, knight of Sarmatia. And it’s terribly amusing to me how you’re ignoring all the tension.”

“The garrison commander told me there weren’t going to be any campaigns till next year.” Though to be truthful, Arthur hadn’t entirely believed him. The interview had started out well enough, but when Arthur had refused the offer of a guide by saying he knew the native languages, the other man’s warm welcome had quickly cooled. And Lancelot had bridled every time Rome was even mentioned…something was going to snap, and soon.

Which did concern Arthur quite a bit, but he hadn’t known Roman-Sarmatian relations had deteriorated so badly until it was too late to turn back. They’d just have to keep their distance from the border, where the fighting was most likely to be, and probably head back in a wide loop. Once Arthur had figured out where he intended to go.

Still, he was being oddly careless about the situation. It wasn’t that he didn’t know full well how potentially dangerous it could be, but rather…that he _did_ know. That he’d spent the better part of his life knowing it on intimate terms, and so he was…comfortable with it. More so than he had been in a pacified Britain.

It was an unsettling realization to have: military service had dulled Arthur’s senses so much. He was more glad than ever he’d decided to take his discharge; it was worth the guilt he felt over leaving Britain in such poor condition.

“One war zone’s much like another? Though it’s not as bad as Britain. They’re still fighting to win; we were fighting to simply hold our ground.” Guinevere rolled over, propping elbows on bed and chin on hand, to look thoughtfully at Arthur. “But I wasn’t actually talking about that. I was talking about how Lancelot is very fond of watching you.”

“The others don’t seem to agree with him about our not being a threat. And he probably is still wondering that himself.” A good reason not to show worry, at least outwardly—any sign of uncertainty on Arthur’s part would probably be taken as an indication that he had something to hide, or was preparing to do something harmful. The more detached they seemed about the escalating hostilities, the less of a threat they would appear.

Guinevere was rolling her eyes at him. Then she smacked his arm and sat up to fingercomb his hair. “He’s not watching you like he’s worried you’ll do something. He’s watching you like he’s wishing you’d do something.”

Arthur rapidly reviewed the past few hours in an attempt to figure out what she meant. He’d been rather distracted by the landscape, so different from Britain yet beautiful in its own way, and by trying to persuade many people in many languages that yes, he really was here just to rebury his father’s ashes. So what…oh. He raised his eyebrows and ignored the slight burn at the edge of his cheeks. “Is that why you’ve been provoking him so much?”

“No.” She gave one last pat to his hair, which was still damp, but was now neatly swept out of his face. Then Guinevere draped her arms around his neck and smiled impishly in his face. “Arthur, we had our time, and we ended it for reasons that I don’t believe have changed. Unless you’ve suddenly decided you want to tear Rome down to her foundations? No, I was teasing him because he annoys me. But he’s not bad-looking.”

“I assume that makes sense somewhere in your mind.” It’d been more the pressure of circumstances flinging them together, but nevertheless that had been a rare bright spot in his life. And she was still intelligent and beautiful and a great friend. So Arthur smiled, cupped her face to kiss her forehead, and then let her go with only the sweet traces of that time lingering in his mouth.

Guinevere merely grinned and stood up, twitching her clothes around to best show off her figure. “You’re a private citizen now, Arthur. For once, you have absolutely no excuse not to relax. And part of the reason I nagged you into letting me come was to make sure you did.” Her voice briefly softened from lilting taunt to genuine concern. “What do you think of him, anyway?”

Sometimes Arthur did regret her lack of tact, which he knew was deliberate because he’d seen her dance diplomatic circles around far more experienced men too many times. “Guinevere, I’m not in the habit of—”

“I hope you don’t make him a habit. Then I might have to kill him,” she tossed back, heading outside.

With a sigh, Arthur heaved himself to his feet and went after her. “You never answered my question. What are you going to do that would need me…preoccupied?”

“I’m not going to start the war early, if that’s what you’re worried about.” A little irked, she pushed at him. “Oh, go stare at the stars. I’m young and I want a little fun before I die, even if you don’t.”

The conversation would’ve gone on longer, except fate apparently had decided she liked making jokes with Arthur in them. Lancelot stepped out from behind another tent, saw Arthur and gestured for him to come up, which gave Guinevere her chance to slip away. Once a Woad, always a Woad.

For a moment, Arthur thought about going after her. But he didn’t have anything concrete on which to base an accusation, and as capricious as Guinevere could be, she might only be wanting to tumble a Sarmatian herself.

Probably not that simple, but in all fairness, Arthur didn’t have a good reason to stop her yet. So he stayed put and hoped she would behave herself.

* * *

Much to Lancelot’s relief, Owein had some excellent stallions he was willing to trade, which saw that business done with more easily than Lancelot had expected. It probably helped that his cousin, still without a wife, had been fascinated with the way Guinevere’s hips moved. For that matter, she was apparently not unwelcome to that idea…

Well, Lancelot had discharged his duties in introducing everyone and explaining the situation. Owein was a grown man, and could judge that temperamental bitch for himself. He was a bit humorless, so she’d have a harder time getting through his skin.

As for the barbs of hers that had gotten through Lancelot’s, they were not—he was not going to prove her right, he told himself. He told himself that at evening meal, and then afterward when he was catching up on the news with his relatives, and he kept telling himself that right up until he turned a corner and saw Guinevere taking her leave of Arthur. It really was annoying how Lancelot couldn’t help taking a good look.

Then again, it wasn’t his fault that the man was only in a light shirt and trousers. And anyway, when was the last time Lancelot let someone else’s opinion override his own? Guinevere could go play in his cousin’s bed; after she’d pricked Owein’s temper, Lancelot would have a legitimate reason to go after her. “Evening.”

“There isn’t much trouble, is there?” Arthur saw the confusion in Lancelot’s face and hastily clarified. “It’s hard not to notice how uncomfortable people are around us.”

Oh, damn. He’d spoken at least two Sarmatian tongues around Lancelot, and he probably knew more—he’d overheard every single stupid comment anyone had made. Sometimes Lancelot was profoundly embarrassed by his younger cousins. “More curious than anything, I think. The knights exiled to Britain have turned into something of a legend, and I believe you’re the first to ever come back.”

“I’ll probably be the only one to.” That dark memory was rising in Arthur’s face again. His voice and his head both dropped, and he turned to stare pensively at the sunset. “There—a fever swept through Britain about a year back. It wiped out nearly all of the descendents, as well as a lot of the general population.”

“Guinevere mentioned that,” Lancelot cautiously said. He slipped up beside Arthur to see what was so special about the sky, but as far as he could tell, it was no different than any other dusk. “The cuts on your arm…”

Which Arthur absently wrapped around himself so he could rub his palm over the scars. Then he caught himself and flicked a wry grin at Lancelot, mocking himself. He looked as if he did that often. “Guinevere and I had milder cases, and I fell sick near the end, when the surgeons had learned more.” His mouth flattened. “They’d had many others to practice on.”

The way Arthur talked about it, slow and deep and biting off the ends of his words, Lancelot had the impression that the vast majority of the story was being left out. But a glance at Arthur’s face told him now wasn’t the time to ask about it.

“So your father missed Sarmatia that much?” As soon as Lancelot had spoken, he winced. Trying for a change of conversation, trying to lighten the expression on Arthur’s face, and of all the possibilities he had to pick such an obvious statement. His mind seemed bent on making him look like a fool around Arthur.

On the other hand, it did produce a laugh from Arthur. “He was planning to finally come, after he’d finished his term of service, and bring my mother as well. There’s this rock formation—he called it the Wind’s Needle—”

“Oh, that? That’s only about two days’ riding from here.”

Arthur stopped and blinked, then gave Lancelot a relieved smile. “I was afraid it’d have disappeared by now—it was special for some reason to my great-grandfather, and my father always wanted to be buried there.”

“So he will be. I’ve a few days free; we can start tomorrow.” In truth, Lancelot should’ve said he would have a few days free, since he hadn’t actually discussed the getting of those days with anyone yet. But then Arthur smiled again, and Lancelot resigned himself to another long lecture from Gawain, Bercilak, and anyone else within hearing distance when they returned.

“Thank you,” was Arthur’s simple response. He seemed to have lost the train of his thought, because for the next few moments, they simply stared at each other.

Then one side of Arthur’s mouth quirked up in deprecation and he looked back at the horizon, chewing on some thought. He glanced at Lancelot and parted his lips to say something, then abruptly stopped himself.

It was getting dark, but Lancelot could’ve sworn he’d seen something like a fast blush run over Arthur’s cheekbones. “Why didn’t your parents come?”

“They died. My mother was killed during a Woad—rebel Briton—raid on our home, and my father in battle.” Arthur’s voice went rough once more.

“For the Romans, I take it. It’s interesting that you still went into the army.” Which Lancelot had meant as polite curiosity, but as usual, he couldn’t stay objective when talking about that subject. “Coincidentally, my parents both died fighting as well.”

“Against the Romans,” Arthur finished. He looked down at the ground, shoulders hunching in pain so palpable Lancelot could feel it scraping at him. “I’m sorry.”

Only a day, and Arthur was already causing drastic alterations in Lancelot’s character, because Lancelot actually regretted taking the conversation down this path. Guinevere had warned him, in a way—Arthur did clearly care, and so much so that it overflowed and seeped into people like Lancelot, who normally wouldn’t see the point in being concerned about something besides the necessities of life. “Why? You weren’t the one that killed them. You’re too young.”

It wasn’t much of an apology, but it was more than Lancelot had given anyone else. And it was a good note on which to walk off—short and snappy, leaving him with the higher ground. So he should walk away, and fast, so he could figure out just what he might be doing before he did it. Because if it was one thing Lancelot didn’t do, it was change for anyone besides himself. Arthur was handsome enough, but he wouldn’t be worth all that effort and trouble and probably pain, as well. No one was.

Lancelot needed his feet to move.

“I…thank you very much. For all that you’re doing for us.” Arthur looked uncertain, eyes searching Lancelot’s face and lips pursing, and _that_ didn’t help a bit. “I think I’m going to head for bed now.”

He waited for Lancelot to answer, but Lancelot didn’t because he was slightly terrified of what would come out of his mouth, given the conversation that had just transpired. After a moment, Arthur gave up and nodded to him, and Lancelot nodded back. Then the other man turned and did as he’d said he would, while Lancelot watched the way the shadows flowed over and off of him.

* * *

Tristan was lifting his head from Galahad’s back before he had fully woken, hand sliding beneath the bedding. He paused to gather his thoughts into a coherent conclusion, then found the long knife he’d hidden and carefully tracked the shadow moving around the outside of the tent. 

Galahad stirred, opened bleary eyes. “What…Tristan, if that’s one of my sisters you’re about to toss a knife at, I’m not going to hold them back.”

“How about a cousin?” called Gawain’s voice. He stepped in almost immediately afterward.

“You’re getting better.” The ashes in the brazier beside the bed were still faintly red, so it was very early in the morning. A few moments’ stirring and some fresh charcoal, and the light was bright enough for Tristan to see the worry carving harsh lines into Gawain’s face. He started to reach for his clothes.

Gawain shook his head, negating that, and perched on the edge of the bed. “Thanks. It’s all the practice I’ve been getting in handling everyone’s tempers while Lancelot goes off with some green-eyed Roman…Galahad, up. Don’t make me dump water on you.”

“Cousins are fair game,” Galahad grumbled. Rubbing at his eyes, he rumpled himself up and glowered at Gawain. “If it’s not the Romans invading, I’m going to—”

“—it might be,” Gawain muttered. He grimaced and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then dropped them to blink tiredly at his suddenly-earnest listeners. “Tristan, I need to borrow you for a day. Sorry about the short notice.”

The extra work was telling on Gawain, especially under the eyes—someone badly needed to have a word with Lancelot. Though everyone swore on their best mares that when Lancelot wanted to he could be brilliant, it’d been a month since they’d met and Tristan still hadn’t seen any evidence of it. “Where do you want me?”

“And why him?” Now Galahad was wholly engaged, eyes fixed on Gawain while he retrieved various pieces of clothing. He started to throw on a shirt, stopped and passed it to Tristan, who in return gave Galahad his right gauntlet. “What’s happened? No—what might’ve happened that we need to know about?”

Gawain blinked hard again, visibly struggling to focus. “We lost track of Ammianus’ vexillations.”

“You—what—wait—how the fuck do you lose track of half an army of legionaries? You—”

The biting hurt, but Tristan was pressing his hand down hard enough so that Galahad couldn’t get a very good angle, so it wasn’t too bad. He finished doing up his jerkin with his other hand, then turned around to see if his hawk was awake yet. No, which would make it easier to slip out and leave her with Galahad. As much as he wanted to take her with him, he had a feeling she’d be a little too noticeable for where he was headed.

“You do when the commander’s a good one,” Gawain snapped, apparently not registering that his cousin was gnawing on Tristan’s palm and yanking at Tristan’s wrist. “Look, there’ll be time to assign blame later. Right now we need to find him again and to know what his targets are. Tristan—there’s riders searching all over for him, enough so that we should know soon. So we don’t need you there.”

“Then where?” A bit surprised, Tristan let his grip slacken.

Galahad pulled off Tristan’s hand and tossed him a glare as a bonus, then did up the rest of his clothing in short, violent movements that almost ripped a few seams. “He wants you to sneak into the garrison. The riders can find Ammianus, but they damn well can’t figure out where he’s going quick enough to get word back to us. If he’s good enough to shake us, he’s good enough to not take a direct route.”

Both Gawain and Tristan stared at Galahad, and for good reason: he had managed to put together all of that, but he apparently couldn’t match his gauntlets to the correct arms. He looked down, swore low and long, and hastily switched them.

“We’re lucky it’s a two-day market. I’ll go in as soon as they open the gates,” Tristan finally said, choosing not to comment on Galahad. There really wasn’t need.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Galahad hissed. He dragged a quick hand through Tristan’s hair, fingers lightly brushing over Tristan’s nape, and then almost literally flung himself off the bed. “And I mean my idea of stupid. I hate sewing you up, and your hawk throws fits every single time. Which I also don’t enjoy.”

Expression vaguely amused, Gawain twisted to call after him. “Where are you going?”

“To kick some bastard out of bed and send him after Lancelot. He’s skirmished with Ammianus before, and it’s about time we saw the benefits of him living to tell about it.” Even the tent flap falling down behind Galahad did so in an irritated way.

Though it was certainly a good idea, and it made Tristan appreciate once again Galahad’s capacity for surprising people. Once the hot temper was stripped away…

“You know, I never did get the whole story from Galahad. And usually he’s willing to tell me all about the miseries of his life, in great detail and loud voice.” Gawain was thoughtfully staring after Galahad.

While Tristan had a fairly good idea of what Gawain was referring to, he started gathering his gear instead of replying. If it was that, he’d rather wait to see exactly what Gawain wanted to know before he volunteered any information. It’d only been a month and a few weeks, and his body alone had just finished healing.

“He said all the delegates went hunting as a way to get everyone comfortable, and then a snowstorm blew up. Plus something about a wild boar goring his horse.” The look Gawain gave Tristan wasn’t judging, but it was considering.

Galahad had an astonishing number of relatives, but of them all he seemed particularly close to Gawain; he’d explained it by saying that Gawain had fostered with his family and had been the only one to _not_ try and rub his face in the mud, but obviously it went deeper than that. After all, gratitude wasn’t precisely something for which Galahad was known.

Moreover, Gawain was in his own right an honest, straightforward and capable man, and so Tristan was doubly concerned about keeping on the man’s good side. Which Gawain’s protectiveness made a bit tricky at times, but it was…a much less offensive obstacle than the usual machinations Tristan encountered in the higher ranks of Sarmatian hierarchy.

“I’m just curious as to how…not to insult, but you two couldn’t be more different.” The smile Gawain directed at his hands was rueful. “Honestly, sometimes I thought we’d have to trade away an entire herd to get someone to tolerate him.”

“It was my horse that was gored,” Tristan said after a moment. He slung his pack over his shoulder, then checked one last time that his hawk was fast asleep. By now Galahad should know better than to need a reminder to take care of her. “And my leg. The snow kept us from getting back to camp, and…if the cold is strong enough, it doesn’t hurt. You just want to sleep.”

When Gawain rose to accompany Tristan, he was a little pale around the lips. “But you didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“No, I didn’t. Galahad knows an impressive number of curses,” Tristan remarked, heading for his horse. “And he gets very insulted when people start to fall asleep on him.”

The dry humor Tristan forced into his words registered with Gawain, but didn’t carry much weight. Instead, the other man peered even harder at Tristan, as if looking for the scars, and then leaned back to shake his head. “The oddest things turn out to be useful…but it’s not just because of that, is it? Because—”

“—if it was, he’d be annoyed and he’d probably try to throw me out.” Whether giving or receiving, thankfulness was not something Galahad found especially welcome. And if Tristan was truthful, that was what had made him really pay attention to Galahad. When life was hard and violent as it was in Sarmatia, it was a rare man that turned down an advantage like a life-debt. And Galahad would’ve been well within his rights to exact it, but he’d thrown the offer back in Tristan’s face and had muttered something about not needing the help of someone who couldn’t even stay on his horse.

Possibly Tristan had been insulted as well. But he’d gotten over that, once he’d realized Galahad said things like that to keep from being the first one to be hurt. It wasn’t very sensible, but then, neither was trading a safe place at the rearguard for one in the front lines. It was just how each of them lived.

Gawain was ruminating on something, but he looked as if his burden had just been lightened a bit. “You are going to be good for him. And Lancelot can shut up.”

“We talk a good deal about him when he isn’t here. I suppose that’s how you tell whether someone’s truly important,” Tristan muttered.

* * *

Guinevere rode up to the two men waiting at the top of the hill, beaming cheerfully at both of them. She hoped Arthur hadn’t been an idiot and had taken the bed, since she’d never bothered to use it. “You do have lovely dawns here, I’ll admit. Though I think the color’s brighter in Britain.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Lancelot growled, jerking his horse around and starting off the moment she crested the hill. He certainly wasn’t one for mornings.

On the other hand, perhaps it was a little more complicated than that. Because Arthur was watching Lancelot in an entirely different way from how he had before. Suppressing a triumphant grin, Guinevere edged up beside him. “Not to your taste? He’s got a large family; we can probably find someone amenable.”

“I’m sure you could,” Arthur dryly replied, gaze flicking to Guinevere’s neck. She wasn’t embarrassed in the least, but he didn’t seem comfortable with it, so she pulled up her shirt to cover the mark. He stifled a snort and looked away, jaw tightening as he prepared to crush whatever suggestion she was about to make. “And while I appreciate your concern in this area—”

“Oh, he is. You never are this defensive when you aren’t really interested.” Good, Guinevere thought, and ignored the tiny voice telling her that maybe she should let Arthur decide for himself.

Men were all flawed, but he was possibly the best she’d ever meet. She’d seen him through a good deal, and now that they had the time and chance, she very much wanted to see him without the traces of gauntness in his face. That was a genuine feeling on her part.

And, she reminded the voice, a contented Arthur by definition worried less about the _world_. It was for his own good—he was the kind of man that couldn’t stay still and let things pass him by, and ever since they’d left Britain, Guinevere had spent long hours watching Arthur futilely trying to adjust to an unstructured life. He couldn’t, and whether that was due to innate personality or to years of military service, the fact was that it’d be unhealthy for him. On the other hand, she didn’t want to see him ragging himself to pieces over yet another war. Dealing with a companion would give him something to do without working him into the ground.

Well, not in an unpleasant way. “Hostilities haven’t broken out yet, but neither of us think that’ll last for much longer. This might be the only time you get to see Sarmatia peaceful within your lifetime. You might as well take advantage of it.”

“I intend to. But I’m not going to…” Arthur trailed off, looking at something ahead of them.

As annoying as Lancelot was, he did cut a fine figure against the sky. Guinevere didn’t bother hiding her smile.

“There’s something wrong in your reasoning, and I’ll figure it out sooner or later,” Arthur muttered, dropping his head. He nudged his horse into a slightly faster trot, since Lancelot also looked impatient and plainly wasn’t dealing well with it.

“My reasoning? Maybe you’re just overly suspicious.” The sun was rising fast and hot, and sweat was already beginning to bead on Guinevere’s neck. She briefly let go of the reins to clip up her braid so it wouldn’t trap heat against her skin.

Her horse started to wander and Arthur reached over to grab the reins, pulling it back on a straight line. “You’re still gripping too hard with your knees. It makes him think he should turn. And no, I don’t think I am. I’ve known you too long.”

Horse-riding was a surprisingly finicky art, but it was necessary that Guinevere master it. So she bit down on her frustration and obligingly let her legs relax. “You could at least find out if it’s a possibility. Wasn’t it you that told me the more choices available, the better?”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean that for…you’re not going to let this go, are you?” he sighed, leaning back. The wind abruptly picked up, throwing Lancelot’s call to hurry up in their faces. “I suppose we—I—should at least try to stay on his friendly side, given everything…but I doubt anything will happen.”

Guinevere didn’t reply to that, choosing instead to let Arthur drift slightly ahead of her so she could watch the conversation between him and Lancelot. It was a delicate situation, and she had no intention of being the one responsible for breaking it. Anyway, a longer wait made the gloating afterward even sweeter.

It looked as if it was going to be a beautiful day, she thought.


	3. Tumble

One edge of the long scroll nearly caught Galahad in the nose and he swiftly ducked, only to trip over a soft lump. He cursed and broke his fall with his hands, then rolled onto his knees. Meanwhile, the lump uncurled a fraction to reveal one eye and part of a cheek scar. Then Tristan recurled, but in doing that, he somehow crossed the two inches separating them so his head ended up pressing against Galahad’s leg.

“He came back just before midday. I told him to get some sleep, because he’s going to have to go out again tonight.” Gawain’s voice gradually unmuffled as he set down his armful of scrolls. They turned out to be beautifully-drawn maps of the border area, complete with neatly-lettered labels of what had to be Roman garrisons and the strengths of their forces.

“Are these numbers right?” Galahad got down on his elbows and squinted at the block letters, laboriously spelling out the Latin in his head and then translating it. He accidentally jabbed Tristan’s head and put a hand back to pat the spot, except Tristan had moved and instead Galahad got his fingers tangled in the man’s hair. “You’re not hurt. Good.”

Tristan nodded and shifted again, this time to accommodate Geraint squeezing in on the other side. The younger knights were all piling onto the floor of Gawain’s tent, since the maps were so large they wouldn’t fit on Gawain’s table. “How is she?”

“Bitchy. Nearly took off my finger, and I was offering her a nice strip of rabbit, so when you’re done with your nap, go make sure she knows you’re back.” Their conversation was confusing the others, but Galahad didn’t feel like explaining a hawk’s temperament to anyone, so he didn’t. Someone suddenly squeezed in beside him and jabbed his side as they did; Galahad jabbed back and found himself matching glares with Urien. “Watch your hands.”

“I’m watching everyone’s hands. Since I wouldn’t want to mistakenly find a dagger in my back,” Urien retorted, shoving again.

Though Galahad had no idea what the man was referencing, he wasn’t about to let a comment like that pass without challenge. He blocked Urien’s push with his arm and sat up so he could look down on the long-nosed bastard. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that Urien, you’re about two words from getting kicked all the way out of camp,” Gawain snapped, making them both look towards him. His hand was hanging loosely by his hip, but the fingers were curling just enough to touch his sword-hilt. “That fight happened years ago, didn’t involve us, and was settled by the elders. Now, you want to keep it in the past, or you want to fight it instead of the Romans?”

“The Romans.” Percival directed a silent snarl across the maps at his half-brother and kept it up until Urien muttered a sulky apology. Then he made a pleading face at Gawain, who looked as if he badly wanted to crack heads together, but was refraining because then he wouldn’t have the right to scold people.

Geraint coughed, fidgeted with his fingers and dropped a few half-finished words before he finally got out his attempt at changing the topic. “These are incredible maps…”

“The numbers are outdated, though.” Tristan had apparently decided he wasn’t going to get any more sleep now, and was slowly sitting up. He flicked his fingers at a few of the marked spots on the scroll before them. “Abandoned here, reinforced here and here. And here I don’t think we know, but it’s probably changed. The commander was going to throw these out.”

One of the advantages of spending so much time with Tristan was that Galahad had gotten used to how the world seemed to tilt a little around the man. So he knew he could expect a stunning blow to the head, and thus he was able to grin at the realization filtering shock into everyone else’s faces.

The expression on Tristan’s face was mild, but a hint of amusement could be detected beneath it. “You said to find out as much as I could.”

“I wasn’t thinking of you stealing things from the garrison commander…don’t suppose you know which boot he puts on first, too?” Incredulity took some of the weariness off of Gawain’s face, and the pleased smile took off the rest. He started to dig around for something in the furs they’d spread over the dirt floor.

Tristan shrugged. “Right one.”

“You’re insane,” Galahad cheerfully told him, taking the opportunity to sneak a hand over Tristan’s thigh. Then he folded his fingers neatly in his lap before Urien could see and make nasty comments about it; the bastard was too sour for anyone to bother climbing into his bed, and he took that out on everyone within range. “So do we know what Ammianus is up to?”

The humor went out of Tristan’s eyes, and he leaned over the map so his hair shaded his face, hands moving over the paper. His shoulders were also a touch more hunched than they had to be, which all translated into him being upset at himself. “No. Best guess is around here, but…from what I can tell, there’s a new general somewhere. He’s given each commander a different set of orders—none of them know much more than that. They complain about it, but quietly.”

“So this new general must have some very powerful connections,” Geraint murmured, staring at the area in question. At the edge of the map, his hands were slowly curling into fists.

When Galahad looked about the room, he could see that same frustration coiling tight around everyone, even Urien. It compressed the emotion in their eyes to flat grimness, and sped up the pulses in their necks. But no one spoke, and the words were just hanging there, necessity begging that they be voiced.

Though Galahad didn’t make it a habit to put himself up as a possible scapegoat, he also wasn’t inclined to suffer when he didn’t have to. And this kind of tension, that slithered softly about and promised to whip blood out of them later, was even worse than the waiting in the moments before a battle began. So he said them. “Or he’s that good.”

Gawain was chewing on his lip, the shadows back in his face. “I don’t think this is going to wait till next year. Geraint? Have you heard—”

“Dagonet talked to Owein, who said Lancelot and the other two left early in the morning. They’re supposed to be back in four days, but they left before Owein could find out where they’re going. He said he’d send someone after them anyway.” The other man looked both apologetic and defensive, as if he expected to be blamed for the stupid mess. “Still, it’ll be a day at the fastest. Two, more like.”

“Irresponsible son of a bitch,” Urien muttered, and this time no one told him to shut up because they were all thinking the same thing.

* * *

Lancelot stayed well away from the water’s edge, where he could keep an ear to the noises of Guinevere tending the food. Considering how she’d been eying him like a cat stalking a broken-winged bird, it wouldn’t be wise to lose track of her. “But you just did this yesterday! That can’t be healthy.”

“Actually, there’s less sickness among people that bathe regularly. And it feels better as well.” Arthur stopped speaking to dunk his head in the current, then rose with water streaming down his neck. He raked the excess out of his eyes as he turned to Lancelot, other hand petting the river surface. “You should at least try it before you dismiss it.”

Either Arthur was spectacularly dense, or he had the smoothest coyness Lancelot had ever seen. Whichever it was, it was ruining Lancelot’s plan to just enjoy the conversation and keep his distance till Arthur’s father was safely reburied and Lancelot could go back to his normal routine. Leaving it, tedious dragging life that it was, had seemed like such a good idea…

…and now Lancelot was feeling a nagging yank in his gut that he suspected might actually be guilt. Snarling at it, he flopped down on the grass and stared at the sky. “You were an only child, weren’t you? No close relatives nearby?”

“Yes…” Soft, uneven splashing, as if Arthur was uncertain as to whether he should get out and properly greet Lancelot.

The thoughts that followed that one didn’t make Lancelot blush, but they did make him throw an arm over his eyes and groan under his breath. This was really ridiculous. Maybe he should just wander into Arthur’s bedroll and get it out of his system—though at this point, he was beginning to acknowledge that if it were really that easy, he would’ve already done it. “Then I’m guessing you never had a pack of cousins gang-toss you into a freezing pond.”

A startled pause, and then a quiet laugh, as if Arthur wasn’t sure whether that would offend Lancelot. The man was ridiculously attentive to other people’s feelings, and he called _Lancelot_ considerate…

…Gawain would have some things to say about that, and right now Lancelot was willing to admit that they were very much in the right of it. He shouldn’t have run off like that, especially when it was looking as if everything was finally going to come together. He could’ve just made one of the boys guide Arthur, and ridden back to wait for the avalanche. Because that was what it felt like, working for so many years to meld the tribes into a uniform front, getting them ready to meet the Romans again. It was going to swallow Lancelot’s life and never let him up to breathe once it’d taken him—he had too much of a stake in it for that not to happen.

“Lancelot?” Somewhere along the line, Arthur had gotten out of the river and was now kneeling by Lancelot’s head.

“You were a commander, weren’t you? Did you ever just…get tired? Fed up with all the people asking your opinion, waiting for you to tell them to do the most obvious little things—just watching you, and every stare a lead weight?” Lancelot hesitated, then removed his arm and looked.

The other man had dried off and dressed, and was leaning over Lancelot to stare curiously into his eyes.

“Why did you join the army, anyway? It’s killed most of your family, one way or the other…” Lancelot asked, feeling too reckless for tact. After all, he never knew when he’d get a chance to be so uncaring again; very soon every step he took might end up killing him. And deep down, he wasn’t sure if he had the kind of fortitude to withstand a lifetime of that. He’d seen old respected knights suddenly break and go mad, seen supposed cowards suddenly learn to stand their ground, and there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

Arthur didn’t look as surprised as he should have, but then, he and Lancelot had already talked obliquely about that, and about many other things—Guinevere hadn’t been able to help riding ahead to scope out the landscape, so Lancelot had had the chance to ask about all those intriguing little details she’d mentioned. Christianity, Rome, Britain and the Woads…some Arthur had spoken about with frankness so stark it scorched, some he’d hesitated so Lancelot could see the pain rising, but when Lancelot had tried to change the topic, Arthur wouldn’t follow until he’d delivered some kind of reply.

As he did now, black humor not doing anything to lighten his expression. “I’m not quite a fool—I don’t agree with the people that say force accomplishes nothing. I’ve seen too many battlefields. But I thought it could accomplish good as well.”

“And what do you say now?” There were drops of water beading on the ends of Arthur’s hair, and they were falling to sprinkle Lancelot. Sometimes the sunlight would catch them mid-fall to burst them into color, a sharp contrast to the darkness of Arthur’s face. He could be unexpectedly, beautifully light, but more often than not it was in the tentative way of a blind man trying to figure out what something was from feeling out its shape. The scars got in the way, Lancelot thought.

A little of it must have shown in his eyes, or possibly the wind whispered it to Arthur, because comprehension flashed in his face. “I still think so. But it’s hard—it’s much harder than I thought to make force lead to peace. I would have chosen my standard differently, so that I wouldn’t now regret taking up the sword.”

“Are you burying your father’s sword, too?” Lancelot felt the heat of the sun seep into his body, turning the dampness on his face into a hazy steam that clogged his head. He let his hand float up with it till his knuckles were running over the line of Arthur’s jaw. There was a hair-fine scar along it, so thin that it couldn’t be seen, only felt.

Arthur’s pupils contracted and he started to rise, swiping a tongue over his bottom lip. Then he stopped and held very still, gaze intensifying until it was peeling Lancelot to the bone. “No. I’ll keep it. As a reminder of all that I’ve done.”

“And just in case, if you’ve any sense. You pick one up, you can’t put it down till someone buries it with you,” Lancelot muttered, giving himself one last moment to back away.

If he did, he’d never have a chance at this again—the fragile drop of calm in which they were was about to fall on the sword.

Lancelot curled his hand around the back of Arthur’s neck and pulled him down.

And Arthur came, eyes widening in surprise as if he hadn’t been leaning closer and closer, hands thudding hard on the ground on either side of Lancelot. His lips were slack at first, but they soon started to move against Lancelot’s, and the flutter of his eyelashes closing was a shocking lightness against Lancelot’s skin.

It was awkward because Arthur was upside-down, and then it was awkward because Lancelot twisted around and up one way to correct it, and Arthur the other. But eventually they spun rightways, into each other so Lancelot was fisting the heavy silk of Arthur’s wet hair and curling his fingers between Arthur’s neck and shirt, so that there was a palm warming the in-curve of Lancelot’s back and another molding itself to his hip. He pushed against them, pulled away, and they followed to knead his clothing away from his skin so the sunlight hit it, a soft but steady burn.

The grass was moist here, roots unsteady in the river-soaked soil, and someone’s knee slipped. They rolled, Arthur swerving under and then Lancelot, because he was too busy exploring the variations in the taste of Arthur’s mouth. He dug his nails into Arthur’s shoulder and yanked, mindlessly trying to gouge away the man’s clothing for several moments. Then he realized what he’d been doing and would have laughed, except it would’ve forced them to separate. And so would undressing, so Lancelot made do with pulling away every piece of cloth that he could.

Arthur tensed, then shuddered liquid every time Lancelot touched him, as if he was expecting every graze to turn into a cut. Though Lancelot wasn’t gentle—his fingers traced around hot raised lines that his nails had just left—that disturbed him enough to slow a little. To not just press them together into a fast hard twisting, but to feel out all those scars and imperfections that he’d been watching. The skin in between was silky, the muscles beneath smooth in their bunch and flat rhythms, but the marks themselves were rough and folded over, snagging at Lancelot’s fingertips. He slid his thumb along the spiraling one from rib to hip and earned himself a sharp bite on the lip.

That deliriously good mouth instantly lifted; Arthur rubbed his nose along the side of Lancelot’s jaw. “Sorry.”

“Maybe I like biting,” Lancelot gasped. Now that he could have air, the need for it was a brutal pressure blowing up his lungs and out his mouth. He braced his foot and hips against the ground, then pushed and shoved them over. Pointedly sank his teeth into the side of Arthur’s neck while his hands squirmed between them and got Arthur’s trousers down. Not all the way, because suddenly Arthur’s knees clamped around him and he couldn’t move while Arthur nibbled a scorching streak up the middle of his throat to just beneath his chin. “What—what was that from, anyway? Never seen one…”

“A whip.” Arthur’s eyes suddenly blanked. It was an illusion, but Lancelot could’ve sworn the body wound around him grew as chilly as it did still. But then Arthur was lunging up and mouthing Lancelot’s neck, shoulders, chest with a fervor that seared away Lancelot’s nerves, and the moment passed. Mostly.

Lancelot slid his hand around Arthur’s thigh, feeling the hard muscles built there by a life in the saddle, and then feathered his fingers around the cock rising to meet his touch. He dove at Arthur’s lips and caught the bottom one between his lip, chewed it a little. Let it go to groan appreciatively when Arthur’s hands swept up beneath his clothes to tease at the skin of his back. It didn’t take long for Arthur to figure out that Lancelot was particularly vulnerable between the shoulderblades and in the lowest part of the spine’s dip; that was why Lancelot always tried to meet the world head-on. “It must’ve been royalty, then—I can’t—”

“No. I told you, Guinevere exaggerates. She makes me what I might’ve—what I could’ve been among her people.” Arthur’s fingers slowed, but the urgency with which his mouth sought Lancelot’s skin only increased. “It was a hot, wet summer when the fever rose. Any educated person could tell you sickness comes and goes with the weather, but—the priests liked to say it was a judgment. I disagreed and turned my back on one of them.”

“What’s a priest doing with a whip? Unless you don’t mean a Christian one…” Grazes of teeth, flat of tongue…they all added up to a hazing of Lancelot’s mind as he tried to think, tried to dull that frightening edge to Arthur’s frantic touches by working the prick in his fingers. Tried to remember why that seemed contradictory.

The lips pressed against his collarbone smiled, and not pleasantly. Arthur suddenly pushed his knee up, snaked a hand down to condense Lancelot’s world into a hot pulsing between his legs. “Christianity’s not a peaceful religion. It—should be—but—priests are generals—generals claim God like he’s some trophy—”

Too hard. Arthur’s voice, Arthur’s hands, Arthur’s eyes squeezing shut against the sun—all too hard. It was like lying with a mountain and not a man.

Lancelot fought it: twined himself around and bit down on Arthur’s jaw till he heard the man gasp, moved his fingers faster and faster over Arthur’s prick, tried to soften it into melting again. He splayed his free hand over the scar’s end that bisected Arthur’s hip, gripping it while he filled Arthur’s mouth so there wouldn’t be room for those words that tried to curl back on Arthur. And he hoped it would swell to fill the rest as well, down into the many recesses that Lancelot couldn’t reach himself but could hear echoing in Arthur’s voice.

He thought it worked, in that moment just before the rush whipped around him and dragged him off. Arthur moaned and something snapped free in the middle of it so it was really two, one shallow and one so deep Lancelot fell into it so it shook his very bones.

* * *

First it caught her breath against the roof of her mouth, the beauty of it burning her. And then it stung, because Guinevere remembered what it was like to be lying on Arthur, watching him drift down into utter peace. The pain of her fingers intruded and she looked down, then resisted the urge to laugh at herself when she had to jerk them out of the little grooves they’d dug in the ground. She picked bits of grass from beneath her nails while she watched and listened; it still hurt, but it was already less than three months ago, looking on while a woman leaned out the window and smiled an invitation at Arthur. In time, it would fade even more—that was how she knew she’d chosen rightly, and at the right moment.

Lancelot stirred, lifted his head to blink blearily at Arthur, whose eyes were still closed and whose breathing had slowed almost to the point of unconsciousness. Only half the man’s expression was visible, and briefly less when Lancelot futilely tried to tug his hair into some kind of order, but that was enough for her to see satiation and wonder and trace of concern in his face. The last was echoed in the way Lancelot reached to almost touch his fingers to Arthur’s mouth, then paused. He shook himself a little and instead laid his hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “Should I be worried about a cooking knife in my back?”

“What?” Arthur asked, slowly opening his eyes. Then he understood and grinned, though he didn’t move. “Oh, no. No, you don’t. She wouldn’t even let me put her down as my wife on our papers—she’s officially my second cousin.”

“Those do seem to come in handy.” The next few mutters were about something involving Owein that Arthur didn’t understand, but that made Guinevere stretch and lick her lips. Then Lancelot slowly pulled himself up and toppled over, absently wiping his hands on the grass as he did. They left smears that gleamed on the ripped-up grass around them. “Maybe I should try this bathing thing. No offense, but your ‘cousin’ has a tongue that’s sharper than most men’s swords.”

That made Arthur laugh, raspy but full in a way that Guinevere hadn’t known he could do. He levered himself up and glanced down at his front, then laughed again. “She can be kind as well. In her own way.”

“I’ll wait until I see that.” Lancelot crawled the few yards to the water’s edge, where he vigorously splashed himself with water. After a moment, he dug out a cloth, soaked it, and tossed it to Arthur. “You don’t do this very often, do you?”

“Do what? Roll around with someone I’ve just met?” Arthur caught the cloth and diligently wiped off his chest and stomach and legs. He was moving differently—looser.

Hunched over to wash his face, Lancelot paused. Then he raised his head and shot a considering look at Arthur. “You’ve gotten a sense of humor.”

In response, Arthur’s face smoothed free of any emotion. “I wouldn’t let it go to your head. A Roman probably doesn’t count for much.”

Lancelot blinked, nonplussed as to whether he’d just been insulted, while Guinevere had to bite down on a tuft of grass to keep from giving herself away.

“Why do you call yourself that?” Lancelot finally asked, finishing his ablutions. The rag came flying at him and he snatched it out of the air, then turned back to the water to rinse it out. “You said earlier that you’ve more or less given up on it.”

“Because it’s what I am--was—what I’ve been for all of my life except for the past year. I’ll not name myself differently until I know I am so.” Arthur started to stand and Guinevere had to beat a hasty retreat to a more substantial clump of bushes and rocks. He picked at his clothing till it was in fairly good shape, then waited for Lancelot to come back.

Of course, the other man made no attempt to straighten out himself, other than to pull things around so he was decently dressed. And it was clear by the way he held himself that he knew exactly how good he looked that way. Guinevere was both appreciative and disgusted.

Interestingly, when Lancelot came within about a foot of Arthur, the proud stance lessened and he became almost shy, stealing cautious glances up at Arthur. He’d had a taste and now he _wanted_ \--

\--“While we’re being honest—are you in the habit of fucking men you’ve just met?” Lancelot stepped in so he and Arthur were only a few inches apart.

Arthur considered the question. Long and seriously, till Guinevere was tempted to stand up and throw a dirt clod at him. But then he leaned in, so close she couldn’t see any space between his mouth and Lancelot’s, and whispered so she had to strain to hear. “I think I could try it.”

Then their lips were molding against each other—Lancelot got his arm up first to pull Arthur closer—and Guinevere silently slipped back to the…not-quite-burnt food. Well, it wasn’t as if any of them were used to delicate diets.

Anyway, Arthur was happy and distracted, and if it was anything like when he was worried and distracted, he wouldn’t notice something like food. And she didn’t particularly care about Lancelot’s opinion.

It wouldn’t be long before Arthur found some sore to pick at, the realistic part of Guinevere’s mind told her. She told it that it’d still be a while, and that was an improvement over picking at sores without any relief in between. Besides, she didn’t want him to take up permanently with Lancelot—that arrogant bastard was too much of a lightweight to properly counterbalance Arthur. But he would do to reintroduce Arthur to enjoying life, which Guinevere very much wanted to see happen. Especially since that way, Arthur wouldn’t concern himself with her.

She cherished his friendship and affection, but he still thought he could persuade her to a serene, backwater life—as if he was in any position to advise that. While Rome stood, she would find no rest except in battle, wherever that was. Britain her land might have been broken for the span of her generation, but Guinevere was not, and she was willing to take the fight to whatever field was most welcome to it.

* * *

“I did send for you! And if you were busy washing the shit off a baby, then that’s not my—ow!” Galahad danced away and dodged behind Gawain, though he peeked around to glare at his sister.

Elaine folded her arms over her breasts and glared back. “Those are your nephews, so I’d speak of them with a little more respect, if I was you.”

She looked as if she’d plenty more such words to wing at Galahad, but Gawain wasn’t in the mood for it. He grabbed Galahad and swung him onto the bed, then stepped in front of her when she started moving toward the cot. “Elaine. We’re very sorry you and Lynet didn’t receive the messages in time, but we couldn’t wait. The news was too urgent—we meant no offense at leaving you out. It was an accident.”

Her glower moved to direct its considerable force at Gawain and she held that pose for a moment longer. Then she drew back and let her arms fall to her sides. “Sometimes I think you’re the only man in this family with any sense. Even my dead husband was a bit of an idiot when it came to treating with the women.”

“Then why’d you marry him?” Galahad muttered, a bit loudly. Gawain shot a quieting look at him and he subsided, but sulkily.

It really was a shame they had to keep sending Tristan out of camp, because he did an excellent job of keeping the stupider statements from ever leaving Galahad’s mind. Without him around…all right, maybe Gawain should be taking into allowance that to explain Galahad’s crankiness. But still, it wasn’t as if no one else wasn’t also missing someone.

Though Gawain was free of that problem, much to his regret…which had to wait, because he had more immediate worries than his lack of bedding companions. “We’re still looking for Ammianus. Reports say he’s most likely around here—” tapping a finger on the map “--but that’s sketchy. Right now we’re just trying to concentrate on protecting the places he might target.”

“The herds,” Elaine instantly said. Then she winced and put a hand to her belly; she was only a month from birthing her latest, and it had been a difficult labor. Especially with her husband newly-dead, skewered by one of the many men he’d cuckolded. That had been a mess to get settled.

Muttering things about pushy women, Galahad climbed off the bed and stood to the side. After a moment, Gawain and Elaine realized that it was an offer and not an insult.

Most women probably still would’ve taken it as one, but she was his sister and so she was used to seeing past the grumpiness. Elaine cheerfully took the bed, and ruffled Galahad’s hair for good measure, which saw him batting her away and dodging behind Gawain. Someday, Gawain would figure out just why everyone seemed to think he made such a good shield; he had moments when he would’ve liked one himself, but there never seemed to be anyone he could use.

“Probably not,” Galahad said, once he’d stopped being an immature moron. He leaned against the table and stared at the ground, taking a rare moment of patience to first sort out his thoughts and then elaborate. “Ammianus is good. He lost the scouts we had on him. The Romans have been going after the horses for years, and they haven’t won that way.”

“Point.” She knuckled her mouth and gazed absently at a clod of dirt beside Gawain’s foot. “Nothing but a stalemate that way…they can’t match us when it comes to anything with horses, and we can’t—couldn’t—match their infantry.”

They’d been working on that. The Sarmatian infantry, and certain new aspects of their cavalry, were details that everyone had done their damnedest to keep very, very quiet, and if the Romans found out about it, then most of Gawain’s life had just been wasted. Not to mention they would’ve just lost the factors they’d been counting on for victory. “You don’t think…”

“But how would he have found out?” A strand of hair had gotten trapped between Elaine’s mouth and hand, and now she was vigorously chewing on it.

In an eerie mirror-image, Galahad was biting at his thumbnail with an identical expression on his face. He wrapped one arm around himself and stared harder at the dirt, as if the answers were slowly emerging from there. “Either he’s gotten better scouts, or someone opened his damn mouth.”

“That still doesn’t answer what he’d be going after,” Gawain interrupted. A coldness had sprouted in his gut and was rapidly unfurling throughout the rest of his body. “Even if he knows about the infantry, everyone’s still scattered. Where would—”

“We don’t have that many good leaders. Great fighters, yes, but strategy—especially infantry strategy—” Elaine shot a look at Galahad. After a moment, he looked up, saw it and reluctantly nodded. “Where’s Pelles?”

Galahad had exchanged his surliness for grim expectation. “Owein’s camp. Bors said his sister’s due, and they’re going to name the brat after him, so he wanted to be there.”

That was well within the lopsided charcoal loop marked out on the map…and that was where Lancelot and his two guests were going to be. As Gawain looked at it, he almost thought he saw the black line snap shut, like a noose.

Then he was striding out the tent and calling for his horse.

* * *

For the rest of the day’s ride, Guinevere’s smile was suspiciously smug. More tellingly, she was unusually polite to Lancelot, in that she lingered far enough behind them that Lancelot assumed she was out of earshot. She looked as if she was, but Arthur had long since learned not to underestimate her ability to learn whatever she cared to.

They stopped for the night on top of a rocky hill, where a smoothed area with a blackened streak at one end showed it was a popular camping spot. “The Wind’s Needle used to be a place where people went to swear unbreakable oaths,” Lancelot explained. “Supposedly if they broke it, then the wind would sew their grave shroud and they’d be marked out to die.”

“Why did they stop?” Guinevere wiped the last of dinner from her mouth and tossed another branch onto the small fire they were banking for the night. The red light painted her skin the way the blue woad had, and she was unconsciously squatting with knees to ears, as if back in the woods of Britain.

Lancelot’s smile was dyed just as scarlet, when he bared his teeth. “Because the first treaty between us and the Romans was sealed there nearly two hundred years ago, and Rome hasn’t fallen yet.”

“It will.” She glanced at Arthur, then raised her chin and deliberately licked her lips, a wolf watching a wounded deer making its last leaps.

Old habit made the protest rise in Arthur’s throat, but it was more than equaled by the low ghostly throb of his scars; he silently rose and walked towards the bedrolls. Rome—the one that existed, the one that had wanted to let fever-struck Britons die and the one that had lashed him when he’d refused that order—was no longer defensible. But he still remembered the Rome he had believed had existed, and the edges of that fragmented dream pained him. The resentment in Lancelot and Guinevere wasn’t Arthur’s, for if he were to put a word to his feeling about Rome now, it would be grief.

“You sound confident, considering your country lost.” The sarcasm in Lancelot’s voice was more detached than usual, as if he were merely observing and didn’t actually intend to wound.

From the sound of it, that was exactly how Guinevere took his words. “Britain’s ill, not lost. She’ll recover. Not in my lifetime, but she will.”

“When you’re snarling like that, I almost like you,” Lancelot laughed. He said something else after that, but by then Arthur was too far to hear.

He could still feel the free emotion that seemed to vibrate off the other man, just as it had by the river. And _that_ would’ve made Arthur embarrassed, if the memory hadn’t called up an enjoyment so…unexpected and alien that it had Arthur overwhelmed before he could even begin to think about how to meet it. No, he wasn’t used to doing that sort of thing: before Guinevere had been a few flirtations in Rome that had amounted to nothing, and then either whores or the meaningless, fast, faceless groping of two soldiers in the dark that descended in between battles.

As for what he and Guinevere had had—war had brought it, and they’d never managed to excise that third specter from their bed. Once, she had touched his marred back, eyes closed and mouth tight, and had asked in a brittle voice if any of them weren’t from Britons. And once he’d kissed her cheek and tasted the traces of woad on it, and he hadn’t been able to touch her for the rest of the week without smelling the blood of his dead men. It had been more than simply a way to warm each other in the midst of death, but it hadn’t had any…buoyancy.

A boot crunched pebbles and Arthur looked up from where he’d been smoothing up his bedroll. Then he sat back so Lancelot would have room to lower himself to the ground. “Guinevere’s taking first watch?”

“I think she might’ve stolen a few looks, back there.” Which obviously didn’t please Lancelot, but it didn’t stop him from covering Arthur’s hands with his own and pressing Arthur backwards.

It was a bit frightening how quickly he could steal the breath from Arthur, and how much Arthur liked that, but it was even more frightening how Arthur found himself groping for something between them—some barrier that he’d grown used to being there—and could feel nothing. If he wanted to roll them over and stroke his fingers down the sides of Lancelot’s face, he could. There was no bugle call, no dead plucking at his sleeve…

“Thinking’s one of your bad habits, isn’t it?” Lancelot drew away and put the back of his hand to Arthur’s forehead, like a mother feeling her babe for fever, then ran his thumb over Arthur’s mouth. “I’ve decided to agree with Guinevere on one thing. You’re not a Roman. Go ahead and keep calling yourself one if it makes you happy, but honestly, it takes about a quarter-hour talking to you to know better.”

His mouth was smiling but his eyes were half-shuttered, prepared to play it as a joke or as a serious matter, depending on how Arthur took it. And how Arthur wanted to take it…he didn’t know. It would’ve been an insult two years ago, but two years ago Guinevere would’ve said he was a Roman and he would’ve—he probably had been trying to kill her. She said they’d met in several battles, but he hadn’t remembered and she hadn’t wanted to tell him which.

In the end, Arthur merely let the words stand as they were. When he could give Lancelot an unequivocal answer, he would, but until then he’d rather not risk an untruth, or a half-truth. “What were you saying before, about getting tired of—”

“Oh, nothing for you to worry about.” The shutters in Lancelot’s eyes suddenly clapped shut, as tight as his tone was breezy.

That hurt. Sharp, and deeper than he’d expected—he’d started hoping—but it was familiar and he soon remembered how to make himself used to it. Except he didn’t have to do that now, either, and so he rolled off Lancelot. “All right.”

No fear that this would turn into a habit, Arthur thought, and with a bitterness that surprised him. He made sure to lock that down as he straightened where they’d rumpled his bedroll, preparing to go to sleep. “I’ll take the next watch, if—”

First his head hit the rock, cracking what would be a considerable bruise into the back of it, and then his flailing hand slapped against a boulder. He hooked his fingers over the top, tried to pull himself up, but instead ended up moving in reverse as Lancelot’s tongue worked deeper into his mouth.

When there were black spots dancing in Arthur’s vision, Lancelot let up. Sat back enough to start ripping at Arthur’s clothing, ducking to lick at the bared skin and make sure that Arthur’s grip kept slipping. “No wonder you don’t do this often.”

“Did you want me to ask? You say I’m not a Roman and then you don’t—want to—” Arthur finally let go of the rock and let his elbow slam back, felt the impact jar cascades of pain up his arm. But it was all swallowed up in the kisses at his neck, the hands moving over him, the body twisting beneath his own palms. “If it’s your business, then it’s yours. You’ve known me for—”

“—I know how long I’ve known you. And I want to open my mouth far too wide, and tell you far too many things.” Lancelot raked a hand down himself, catching fastenings so his clothing gaped open in the wake of his fingers. He lunged and savaged Arthur’s shoulder, pushing them back down, and for a long moment Arthur was staring dizzy-eyed at the emerging stars.

Then Lancelot rose, planted himself above Arthur’s waist and pushed himself down. Not half-risen, and Arthur’s cock was suddenly gripped in tight heat, only the faintest feeling of slickness to reassure him that he wasn’t ripping Lancelot wide open. He snapped up and grabbed at Lancelot’s shoulders, trying to stop the violent spiral in which they’d fallen, but the shift whiplashed up, tore Arthur’s gasp in two and brought him to a shaking halt.

It seemed to have caught Lancelot as well, because the other man merely leaned against Arthur, breathing ragged in the curve of Arthur’s neck.

“I won’t take,” Arthur finally said, trying to at least hold still, if he couldn’t summon the energy or the will to fully withdraw.

“Then you’ll be assured to know that I’m giving,” Lancelot snapped. His face tensed against Arthur’s skin—he clenched brutally hard around Arthur—and then he relaxed a little. A little more. One hand came up to drift along Arthur’s whip-scar, as if Lancelot found some kind of comfort in petting it.

At any rate, Arthur found some, and it was enough to persuade him that they were safely away from that yawning precipice of madness, and closer to where they’d been on the riverbank. He took the deepest breath that his lungs could handle, then slowly brought up his arms around Lancelot. Waited till he felt the man’s muscles loosen before he tried a roll of the hips.

“Oh, that’s good…” Slow as the sun crawling behind the horizon, Lancelot’s head tilted back and his lips parted so his tongue could flicker over them. His hand clamped down on Arthur’s shoulder and he moved to meet the thrust.

Guinevere had to have heard something. The thought stumbled through Arthur’s dazed mind and tripped, tumbling over the side just as they tumbled again. He remembered to twist so he broke Lancelot’s fall, but after that he couldn’t think because of how the shift changed the way Lancelot moved around him, on him, and it burned through his head and eyes so he thought they were getting farther away. So Arthur scrabbled back, clutched at Lancelot and tried to press them together so that wouldn’t happen. And things reversed themselves, tracing nail edges on his skin so he sank beneath them, deeper and deeper till he thought he could go no further. Only somehow Lancelot’s mouth did open that wide, and Arthur’s tongue couldn’t help but fall inside.

It was night so Arthur didn’t know whether his vision had gone black, or whether he’d just imagined it. Which truth it was didn’t—didn’t matter. Didn’t ultimately make a difference to what had happened, just as not knowing what he was didn’t change how much he enjoyed it. Shocking realization to have, and his muscles were too limp for him to dodge, so he had to lie in it and absorb it.

After a few moments, enough strength crawled back into his limbs for him to pull out and slump to the side on his belly. He could feel stickiness cooling beneath his stomach and the bedroll, but he couldn’t convince himself that it was worth cleaning off. Not when Lancelot was slowly stretching, blissful satisfaction on his face, and then curling up to lick at the sweat streaking Arthur’s face.

“I wonder if a man can be nothing more than his name,” Arthur murmured, arching under the hand that rubbed slowly down his back. “But even there, I’ve two for two peoples…”

“Would you be content that way?” The contentment slowly receded from Lancelot’s eyes, leaving them dark and intense and scrutinizing. His hand was still wandering, trailing some kind of oil along Arthur’s spine, and now it had almost reached the end. It stopped where the swell of buttock started, drawing slow circles. “Some men make their names into countries or kingdoms.”

Though he could feel the conversation turning, could see the change in the other man’s face, Arthur was still too lightheaded to concentrate. He did try, but it was like spinning through one dream after another without any sense of up or down, forward or back, in or out. “In Britain, I started as a soldier and I ended as Arthur. The name spoke to three peoples, telling them knight, killer…here it merely means some stranger passing through. I’m still trying to decide if that’s better, being no one.”

The fingers dipped a little lower, and Arthur didn’t tense because he didn’t know what to expect, and so for this short span of time, nothing could surprise him. He watched Lancelot prop himself up on one arm, felt the fingers stroke lower and then the one fingertip easing into his relaxed body.

It still hurt, but not as much as Arthur had thought it would. Maybe he groaned a little, feeling some reality prickling at him, but the rest of the finger slid in easily enough, and then a second. And soon they were probing and spreading and-- _there_ made Arthur bite down on his lip and sway back to meet Lancelot’s fingers.

“When you were Arthur and that name meant something,” Lancelot began, voice rough as the rock on which they were lying. “How’d you—what did you hold to? Was it enough to have some higher cause? Is—is there one worth it?”

Somehow this was related to those mutterings from before. And if Arthur was honest, if he admitted that part of him still thought like a general and that he couldn’t stop it, he knew he had more than a faint idea of why Lancelot was asking. But it wasn’t his war, and despite his father’s blood, he didn’t feel as if he had any right to involve himself. As far as he’d stepped from Rome, he still wasn’t so far that he could turn all the way around and bare a sword at her.

“I think there is. But I wouldn’t ask me to judge how much a cause is worth,” Arthur finally said. Heat was collecting in his belly again, and his prick was beginning to harden; he closed his eyes and slowly let himself follow that rising flow once more, riding the crest as his hips rode Lancelot’s hand.

“Is it enough to keep you from wanting something else? At least while you’re following--” Lancelot cut himself off there, but Arthur could hear the rest in the silence that followed.

He opened his eyes again—had to grab at the ground in order to summon up the effort for that—and he started to answer, but the crest overtook him and he collapsed beneath it. For the best, most likely, because he didn’t trust his judgment there, either. Not now that he’d a taste of life without duty and shadows, that he had lived a little without thinking of how it would serve Rome, and without knowing what it was he had cut out of his life.

It seemed that Lancelot hadn’t been expecting him to be able to give an answer, for the man quietly withdrew his fingers and then rolled them into the blanket, as if he were about to fall asleep. But a last question floated to Arthur’s ear: “Where are you going, after you bury your father?”

And once again, Arthur couldn’t provide an answer.

* * *

The moon was a high, white, perfect circle, centered in the endless black arch of the night. Most would have stared and admired, but Tristan was resisting the urge to curse. It gave off too much light, forced him to keep lower to the ground and to move slower, and that meant he took longer than he wanted to in circling the camp.

They’d eventually decided that Ammianus’ target most likely was Bercilak’s home camp, where the majority of the horses belonging to his and Lancelot’s people had been quartered for the duration of the ‘trading fair,’ which was how the Sarmatians were passing off the coordinating meetings. It had seemed too simple an answer for a man that had sneaked past Sarmatian scouts on Sarmatian land, but it had been too much of a chance to leave unguarded. And so Tristan was here, keeping watch.

He should’ve been back at the main camp, following up on the uncertainty in Gawain’s eyes and the pensive silence into which Galahad had fallen, or better, working at tracking down Ammianus, but the others were still not comfortable with letting him roam that far out-of-touch in their lands. They still sang songs about wars and raids happening nearly a hundred years ago, and their dead ancestors and his bloody-handed ones were what they saw when they looked at him.

Normally Tristan was, if he cared at all, proud of that, but now it was frustrating. If they sat and thought for a single moment, they should have easily recognized what it meant just for him to shift tribes, to come this far west and to drop his things in Galahad’s tent.

But they hadn’t, and he was endlessly circling a clump of tents that he _knew_ were safe as anywhere here while his hawk was probably screaming at Galahad, and while Galahad worked himself into careless irritation. Tristan gritted his teeth and stopped, listening to the night.

Perfect silence.

If he went back to his horse now and rode without break, he could be back before dawn. But if he did that, then it would be held against him, and that would put Galahad and Gawain in the position of defending him when they had other matters needing their attention.

So Tristan stayed. And when the sun rose and he saw the dark oily smear on the horizon, he curled his nails into his palms till he drew blood.

Then he was in the saddle, riding as if the earth were falling away behind him.

* * *

When Guinevere finally turned in for the night, Lancelot was sitting demurely besides Arthur, clothes straight and hands preoccupied with mending something. It was all entirely too amusing, but what she could see of Arthur’s face in the dim light was resting, so she let it pass for the moment. Anyway, in her experience, she got a better reaction if she teased when someone wasn’t expecting it.

She woke briefly when Arthur switched for Lancelot, partly because she’d grown too attuned to Arthur’s breathing patterns and partly because he knelt by her for a moment, hand stroking her hair. “You aren’t about to change the world, are you?” she murmured. “Because it’s too early for that. At least wait a few hours.”

“No,” and there was mirth in that one word, but a strange solemnity as well. He turned. It was dark, but she’d long since learned to translate sounds into movements and so she knew he was looking at Lancelot, who’d apparently fallen right into sleep. Like a lifelong soldier, awake when he was awake and resting the moment he got a chance. “You once told me I wasn’t built for faith.”

“I’d still say so—you question everything, and nothing in the world’s perfect enough to stand up to it.” Guinevere wanted to sleep as well because, as much as she was looking forward to plunging back into the rush of the fight, she would’ve been a fool not to acknowledge that peace did have its fleeting attractions. Being constantly on the edge of the sword had worn on her, too; that was why this time, she was planning to take things on her own terms. Which included breathing when she needed to, so she could last that much longer.

On the other hand, she could read the tones in Arthur’s voice and so she resigned herself to staying up a few more moments.

“So what do you call what you feel for Britain?” Arthur asked.

Damn. She had overestimated that part—but Arthur wasn’t typically one for only a pretty face and a flippant tongue, so Lancelot must have shown some depth.

“Before I answer that, tell me what you called what you felt for Rome? Admiration and respect? Was there any more than that?” she countered.

Across the way, Lancelot stirred and they both froze. Then a small puff of air escaped Arthur’s lips, as if he had suddenly bit back a reply. He stood and walked off.

For several moments afterward, Guinevere laid awake and traced out the constellations and thought. What she hadn’t said was that he was built far too well for loyalty, even when his eyes were open and seeing the flaws in what he followed. It was true that nothing was ever free of imperfections, but it was also true that some things summed up to be more than their flaws, and that some things summed up to be less. Like Rome. Like Christianity. That was why, though she’d sunk herself far into them to learn their ways, they had never caught her, and why Arthur had ultimately given up on them.

She fell asleep on the hopeful—wistful—thought that Arthur would choose better this time, when he finally found a replacement to fill the rents Rome had left in him.

When she woke again, the back of her neck prickled and her hand was lying on top of her dagger. The flavor of the air had changed, and it was collecting sourly at the back of her throat.

Guinevere flicked the crusts from her eyes and carefully sat up, more listening than looking around. Something rustled on her left and she silently spun to face it.

In the near-dawn light, Arthur’s eyes glowed: eerie, bright, hazy over the darkness behind. He was standing, but half-turned as if he’d been about to come get one of them.

She immediately looked over to Lancelot, but he was already up and looking in the same direction as Arthur, shadows crawling beneath his skin and turning his eyes to glittering steel. His hand was on his knee, and gripping it so hard that his knuckles were white. By the same trick of the light that had filled Arthur’s eyes with foxfire, a faint and deceptively serene glow clung to them.

On the horizon, from where they’d come, was a long smoky wash that Guinevere could identify without any effort on her part. She’d seen so many burnings that it was a reflex for her, just as glancing first at Arthur was.

“What are you doing?” Arthur suddenly said. Demanded. His voice had dropped to the octave he used when delivering orders.

Lancelot’s voice rose in counterpoint as he spun, all that pent-up rage finally ripping out. “What, are you going to turn around and defend Rome again? We’re trying to defend ourselves, you fucking hypocrite. They’ve—where are you going?”

“I didn’t ask why you’re doing it—that I know.” The words whipped over Arthur’s shoulder like a full quiver of arrows emptied into one target. But he wasn’t aiming at Lancelot, that _Guinevere_ knew. “I asked you what you were doing.”

He was nearly at his horse before she had finished standing up; Guinevere calculated the possibilities of both situations, gave up Arthur’s for lost and turned on Lancelot. She grabbed him beneath his arm and yanked him to his feet. “Come on! That’s your cousin’s—”

And he ripped off her hands, pushing her back. “What, afraid you’ve just lost your entry into our people?”

That took her aback for a moment, but Guinevere was used to having the situation snap back at her and she sidestepped, diving behind to gather up their things. “That’s a fairer attack than the one you made on Arthur. Who I see you’re not going after, you fool. He’s asking because he’s trying to piece together what happened.”

“Are you trying to make me kill him?” It was an interesting way to phrase that.

Mostly uninterested, Guinevere whirled up and had a blade at his throat the same moment he seized her wrist. His grip was crushing the bones, but she’d fought through worse pain and so she could smile at him. “If you ever suggest that again in my hearing, I will kill you. Now go look at the bodies. You’ll have to, sooner or later.”

His flinch nearly put a fist in her face. “What would you know about that?”

“More than you do, since you’ve been under a supposed truce for the last few years. What, never seen a massacre before? Arthur has seen plenty.” She returned to swiftly bundling up everything, and when she was finished with that, carrying it over to the horses to strap it back on them. Arthur was already riding for the smoke. “He’s going because he can read the signs of the Romans better than you, and because he can’t help reading them, even if they’ll slice themselves into him.”

Lancelot was finally shaking off the shock of realization and was climbing into the saddle; Guinevere was both reassured and annoyed to see that he didn’t wait for her before he started off. She caught up easily enough, and then he started again.

“Didn’t you two ever step back and look, and know what you were about to become and wish you didn’t have to?” He slashed his reins down so hard that they flicked sideways and nearly touched Guinevere’s horse. “This is going to steal my life.”

“Of course we did. Arthur does that all the time. If it was a perfect world, we’d shape ourselves and not be bent by distant cities. But it’s not, and once you’re there and looking, you’re going to forget you ever knew what it was like to not want war.” To be free of it—she didn’t mention that eventually one remembered fragments, so different they seemed hallucinations more than memories, but that by then, it was too late to do more than remember. He had enough brains to figure out that for himself.

Anyway, Lancelot wasn’t someone she cared enough to worry that much over. More urgent was Arthur, and was the inevitable reaction she knew he was going to have, flaying him raw and angry.

If Lancelot had been perceptive enough to ask about that, she would’ve told him she’d never meant to bring Arthur into it. She knew the kind of advantages Arthur would bring, but she also knew the kind of damage he would sustain and she wasn’t sure that he could last a second time. Nor was she sure that, if he did last, what he’d be by the end would be anything like the man she knew now.

Too late to stop that as well. Guinevere bit her lip till she tasted blood and tried to drown herself in that metallic taste, looking forward instead of back.

* * *

Their parents’ generation had clashed again and again with Rome, and there were enough elders walking around with the horrors of that etched into them for Gawain to have never doubted the Roman capacity for atrocity. And he’d seen battles as well, most against the Romans and a few against tribes too stubborn to join them freely and too powerful to leave at their backs. But that had been straight fighting, with the rush of blood to carry him through, and then there’d been the truce, which hadn’t kept the Romans from tormenting individuals, but had kept their activities to a minimum. He’d never seen—seen something methodical and icy and inhumanly precise like this.

“Broken truce,” grunted Gorlois, cresting the hill beside Gawain. The old warrior eyed the smoking ruins below, somehow managed not to get his gaze trapped by small charred bodies. “Saves us the trouble of doing it.”

“How can you—” Galahad snarled the rest into incoherency and violently twisted about, jerking his horse forward. Then he stopped and squinted past the camp, where several little dots were fast approaching. “Lancelot.”


	4. Declaration

By the time they’d all gone through camp, sorted out the wood ashes from the human ones and seen to the two or three people that had survived, the place was a veritable charnel fair. Gawain had sent Galahad running back to the main camp, both to get reinforcements and to get the word flying over the steppes: they’d passed from truce to war, and they couldn’t step back over the line. Some of Lancelot’s other relatives had shown up and he, just arrived and long past breathless, had had to exhaust himself making them keep order, because the last thing they needed were a thousand different private revenge quests dividing a thousand different of their best into chunks that even the clumsy Romans could swallow.

A little after the sky had begun to darken, a lone rider had shown—Tristan, some kind of tracker extraordinaire, from what Guinevere could gather. She had taken one look at the situation and had decided it would be better to stay low, help nurse Owein so she could keep her head down and forestall any attempt by him to shift blame on her and Arthur.

Arthur, who was being a reckless fool and thus was being himself, was walking about the camp as if it were his old army milling around him and not a seething, raging mob of Sarmatians who saw that he was a foreigner and who were begging for the slightest excuse. Which he looked as if he wanted to provide, what with the way he kept stopping to poke at a piece of charred wagon, or to gaze stone-eyed at a severed limb.

“Where…?” The man beneath Guinevere’s hands started to stir, and she quickly laid a finger to his lips.

“Don’t move yet. I need to finish smearing this on the burns so they won’t be infected.” And she needed to make friends with the women, or with someone who knew plants, because her supply was running dangerously low. She reached for the small bottle beside her—

\--lunged back just in time to save her hand. The sword thunked into the grass, but the spear-tip nestled just beneath her chin.

“Funny that they’d go after the camp where you also went,” rasped a knight with bloodshot eyes. He slowly slid his hand down to the other end so he could flatten his palm against the spearbutt in preparation to skewer her.

Her dagger was already in her hand when Owein jerked to life once more. He hissed, snapped into a half-curl, but his gaze was steady enough. “Percival. They didn’t come because of her. Back down.”

“Maybe her figure’s gotten you a little confused—” said a second knight, swaggering up with ax swinging loose from his shoulder. There was enough of a resemblance to Percival for Guinevere to suspect familial relations.

“Urien. If you even…” And there Owein’s breath ragged to a stop and he started to collapse.

Not much for personality, not even as able as Lancelot at understanding her, but he’d given her a fair hearing, and then he’d given her a fair bedding. Rare enough, considering that most men’s idea of that consisted of biting down on her neck and then shoving in their prick. But he…it seemed that Guinevere was as ill-adapted for well treatment as Arthur was. She reflexively caught at Owein, then glanced back at the other two too late to see their muscles shift. And her hands were full.

“ _Don’t_.”

Percival froze and jerked his spear away. Urien actually flinched. And considering how the ice softness of Arthur’s hiss curled shivers around Guinevere’s own bones—with her not even being the target this time—she was impressed by their control.

“Get the fuck back,” Lancelot snapped, stalking up. He came fast and furious and he was slapping the two men to the ground before Guinevere could even look to see Arthur. Then he flashed a glance at her, irritation rising high in it as if to dare her to comment on him intervening on her side, before turning to Percival with hand on sword-hilt. “You’re mistaken. And if you weren’t, you’d still be very fucking wrong because they’re my guests and if you touch them without my consent, you’re violating my honor.”

Using Guinevere as a support, Owein had nearly managed to pull himself upright. His hand grazed hers, which was still locked around the dagger pressed between them; a half-smile briefly graced his face and for a moment, she saw the blood tie between him and Lancelot. “Your salve is taking away the pain. Thank you.”

“It’d go faster if you lie down.” She slowly withdrew, making sure he wasn’t going to collapse without her support, and stood just as Gawain approached.

His words were curt and hard. “Percival. Urien. I swear, if I have to tell you another time, I’ll call you out myself so I can deal with one of your other brothers instead. Go help Galahad with arranging the clean-up.”

Urien opened his mouth to protest, but Percival smacked him first and he choked instead. The two of them grudgingly got up and went away a few dozen yards, glaring at Arthur as they did. He didn’t meet their gazes so much as let them slide past his too-blank, too-controlled face, and he only lowered Excalibur halfway.

Gawain, however, had lost interest in that byplay and was rounding on Lancelot. “You irresponsible—where have you been? Ammianus is romping somewhere behind our backs and you go—” his eyes shot to Lancelot’s neck and then red anger suffused his face “—you go off to fuck your damned guest! Which one—no, I don’t even want to know.”

“Listen to me—no one knew about Ammianus, no one could’ve predicted what he did. Not when I left. So don’t tell me if I’d stayed put that he wouldn’t have come here. Don’t tell me that I can control the fucking Roman army—” Lancelot whirled and chewed at the air, then turned back to show raw reddened eyes at Gawain. “—I just lost twelve of my family today! Their blood is soaking my nose, and you think I don’t _care_ that—”

Arthur’s eyes went from one to the other, some bleak final decision settling in him. Some _judgment_ \--the guilt, Guinevere recognized. Realized, and she was leaping over to grab his arm as he sheathed Excalibur, but he pushed her away.

“If the two of you keep fighting, you’re going to lose too much time.” The loud scraping of metal had gotten their attention, and Arthur kept it by methodically speaking, by carefully pacing over to his horse so he could get on some more suitable clothing. Suitable for hard riding, and for fighting.

An almost dead hope bloomed a stinging-sharp taste in the back of Guinevere’s mouth at the same time that foresight shrank her gut into a tiny, incredibly dense particle of ice.

“Ammianus? He spent a few years in Britain—we fought beside each other.” As if he wasn’t already being suicidal, Arthur raised his voice so everyone else could hear. He didn’t seem to notice—or didn’t care—how hands were going to hilts and bows and spearshafts. Or maybe he did, because for all his hatred of pretenses, Arthur knew how to employ them just as well as any other great leader when he needed to. “This wasn’t a massacre—this was an assassination, wasn’t it?”

Lancelot had gone very, very still, with only his eyes widening so their dark centers seemed to reach out to engulf Arthur. One of his hands was curled against his hip, and as Guinevere looked at it, the knuckles went whiter and whiter.

“What would you know?” someone finally called. Tristan. And oddly enough, he sounded genuinely interested.

“How the soldiers went through—if it was only a slaughter, they wouldn’t have bothered to drag people out and line them up.” The lessening light painted Arthur’s face in gaunt black and ominous orange as he finished straightening his gauntlets. Tugged the collar of his leather jerkin so it was centered, and began strapping Excalibur to his back instead of to the saddle. “It wouldn’t have been the only one. He would’ve sent out groups to strike as many officers—as many leaders as he could.”

“Gorlois almost, Gareth yes. I just got word—hadn’t even told you,” Gawain muttered to Lancelot.

“Then he’d pull everyone back together and retreat back to his garrison for the day. So the only way you’ll catch him is on the move.” Arthur yanked the last buckle tight and then paused to rest his hands on the saddle. His head dipped and his lips moved…Guinevere squinted but she couldn’t make out the words. Though she could guess.

Lancelot finally said something, looking as if the words had to be dragged out. “And you know where that’ll be?”

When Arthur lifted his head, smiling at the sky, the feeling in his face was neither happy nor furious, but something far more determined and far more desolate. “Do you know where Roman cavalry officers went to learn how to fight? Britain. It has—had a steady supply of cavalrymen and a persistent but disorganized native resistance. After two or three years, officers rotate to other parts of the empire—except me. I stayed.”

“So what the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Percival called. His shakiness had subsided into a nervous, stunned stare at Arthur, which showed that his mind was beginning to work.

“It means I trained Ammianus and most of the cavalry officers you’ll be fighting against.” The smile vanished from Arthur’s face, and when he vaulted into the saddle, not a single hand raised to stop him. When he was sitting there, gazing about as if he could see the fires and was about to try and get burned by them, Guinevere almost believed they were back home. “I’ll know where that will be once you tell me what you have going on. And yes, you can trust me. If I lead you wrong, you can always kill me.”

Guinevere had been expecting that, but nevertheless when it came she had to bite down on her tongue to keep from lashing out. Because she had no idea whom she wanted to hit.

* * *

Back at the main camp, just about anyone who had a claim to a leadership position joined in on interrogating Arthur, tossing questions from all directions in an effort to make him falter. To make him slip and show his true colors, proving that his offer wasn’t genuine. Even Lancelot participated, however much it made him sick inside—because he could tell Arthur wasn’t dissembling, and because he had to carry out the duties of his rank, and that meant making sure that there was no risk to those under him. Especially now.

Arthur outlasted all of them, eyes nothing but mirrors and voice calm and weighty as a windless day in summer. He met their questions and simply rolled them under with the detail and precision of his answers, and in the end, he was the one querying them. When Lancelot finally slipped out of the tent, Arthur was bent over the maps and sketching possible troop movements with a stick of charcoal someone had hastily produced.

“That was a nice map.”

Lancelot jerked to a stop, hand flying to his swords. But then he saw just who was emerging from the dark and he relaxed. Allowed himself the sharp edge of a grin. “Fresh off the Roman commander’s desk, from what I understand.”

Guinevere had her arms clasped about herself, but the way she swayed up to him, chin high and lips in a full sneer, was anything but defensive. Her head went down so her hair—she’d taken it out of the braid—swept softly over her shoulder, and then she turned to look slantwise at him. Shoulders perpendicular to his front, hips parallel to his, shirt open far enough to present the soft swelling tops of her breasts. It was a very pretty presentation, he had to admit.

“Aren’t you clever,” she purred, eyes flicking up and down him. Long, long lashes fluttered an invitation that wasn’t echoed in her gaze. She breathed in, breasts plumping up, and leaned closer so her mouth almost grazed the words on his jaw. “The enemy’s maps, and now the enemy’s methods. You’ve just about gotten everything.”

“Except a victory.” His skin was prickling where her breath warmed it, prelude to a rash. He would have preferred to stand back, but he wasn’t about to show weakness to her.

She tilted her head at a coy angle and nodded. Stepped a little past him so their shoulders brushed past each other. “So go get one. Arthur’s told you how to do it—you’ve gotten all you need from him.”

Guinevere had continued to move so the words had floated over her shoulder, highs and lows of tone in time with her fingers that were slowly moving up and down her arms, as if she were cold. She was probably born cold, the bitch.

“Unlike you, I don’t fuck my way to them,” Lancelot fired back, and he knew he’d hit on the right explanation when he saw the tiny hesitation in her step.

It didn’t last long. All affectations of flirtation dropped; her arms went down and her walk turned into the rolling, self-assured stride of the fighter that she was. “You can fuck me any time, as long as you’re finding Romans for me to kill,” she called back. “I don’t care. It’s just a fuck and no one’s fooled as to differently. But it’s not to him. So call off your friends and let him go. And tell that bastard to your left to stop staring.”

“I didn’t—Arthur—what bastard?” He wanted to go after her and break the arrogant arch of her throat. He wanted to go back inside, drag Arthur out and have him on the grass. He wanted to toss Arthur back in the damned ocean and forget the man had ever existed. He wanted to be able to look Owein in the eye when he finally got to visit his cousin.

Instead of doing any of those things, he turned around.

Tristan eased out of tent’s shadow, staring speculatively at Guinevere’s back. “She knew I was here.”

“Yes, yes, you can admire her later. If Galahad doesn’t throw you out, and if none of his try to kill you. He’s a brat, but they’re still so damned protective—” Lancelot gagged on the word and had to slap a hand over his mouth. He pinched his nose between his fingers and held his breath till the bile receded and he was sure it wouldn’t suddenly flood his mouth. Then he looked up at the other man.

No expression, as usual, but something wounded and nasty was crawling around beneath Tristan’s blankness. It wasn’t hard to figure out what, though Lancelot still needed a moment because it was so _surprising_ , what with the extreme self-possession Tristan exuded.

Lancelot needed to calm down. Now. He needed to breathe—he did that—and let his arms and hands hang loosely by his side—he did that—and he needed to act as if he had a brain. There was no point in dwelling—not now. He had gaps to fill and people to see—and he needed to figure out what to do about Arthur. Guinevere could handle herself, and if she was serious about fighting with the Sarmatians, she’d be too busy to really carry out a threat. And too intelligent.

So it was Arthur first. Well, momentarily, because first Lancelot needed to mend the break he’d just made with Tristan. He sucked in more air and tried not to sound too forced. “You know we say that because it’ll never happen. If it was going to, it already would have. Galahad’s worse than a mean dog at letting go.”

One eyebrow rose. Then Tristan produced something clinking and gleaming: a scrap of someone’s chainmail. “She might be useful.”

“We dearly hope,” Lancelot muttered, taking the links. He ran his finger over the broken links—fresh snaps. They caught the brightening light of dawn and shot them into his eyes so he could feel exactly how terrible he felt; less sleep than the night before, and not even—never mind. “Found Ammianus?”

“Found the cavalry troop he sent out after Nimue, exactly where Arthur said. She’s fine—spoiling for a counterstrike, but fine.” Tristan sounded impressed. Which meant he’d been successfully distracted, or placated, from Lancelot’s burst of temper.

Well, that should relieve everyone, even if Lancelot was strangely unsatisfied by unequivocal good news. And they badly needed that.

He handed the scrap back to Tristan, belatedly noting the blood crusted on it, and pointed to the tent. “Go ahead and let them know; they’ve mostly given up and are just letting Arthur talk. And—get Arthur out of there, and send him round to my tent. I need to speak with him.”

Strictly speaking, Lancelot wasn’t in a position to order around Tristan, but he assumed the pleading undertone that’d accidentally crept into his words would explain matters. It seemed to, for Tristan merely gave him a sharp glance before stepping inside.

Lancelot resisted the urge to hang about and walked quickly to his quarters, where he met the healers coming out. A short, pointed conversation with them convinced Lancelot that at least he wouldn’t need to worry over that, and then he ducked inside to see Owein teetering on a lacerated right leg, face full of concentration but otherwise not registering the pain that was shaking his whole body.

There was a reason Lancelot tended to come off badly around Tristan—the man reminded him too much of this cousin. “Sit _down_.”

Owein sat. “That was what I was trying to do. I needed to take a piss.”

His face was blanched white with pain, and it retained that colorlessness long after the blood should’ve started seeping back in. His voice was disturbingly devoid of intonation as well; while he could match Tristan for deadpan expressions, both Owein and Lancelot had slight lilts, courtesy of their mothers’ clan. But something had smashed Owein’s voice flatter than the plains.

Something. Lancelot gave himself a smack for still shying away from the subject and started repacking his things, which he’d dumped by the bed without looking…last night. His eyes kept wanting to close on him and his mind seemed as flittering as that of a small child’s, refusing to remember what he’d need for going to war. “Bercilak will be along in a moment; he’s staying here so he’ll watch over you and—and the others that lived. Heal up and don’t do anything stupid—the last thing I need is to have to worry about my back.”

Nodding, Owein picked at the bandages around his arm. He was looking at Lancelot as if he were just listening, taking notes and not thinking about anything else. As if that could really be the case.

“Later we’ll figure out compensation, but you’ll be settled in full. Bercilak is seeing to the burials. And—and damn it, stop staring like that,” Lancelot snapped. And then he wanted to snap his tongue in two and carve the angry, regretful, embarrassed flush out of his cheeks.

It was a nasty silence, but again, mostly on Lancelot’s part. Which just added to the feeling that he had to make up the ever-widening difference, so his nerves didn’t get any better.

“I don’t blame you,” Owein finally said. He’d stopped fiddling with his bandages and was instead reaching over to help Lancelot sort knives. “There wasn’t any way you could’ve known, and if you had, you would’ve acted differently.”

“Are you sure you aren’t just being especially vindictive, and letting me live to suffer?” As sarcastic as Lancelot made the words, the question was dead serious.

So was the answer, and Owein was much more polite about it. If he hadn’t been so bruised, Lancelot probably would’ve taken a trick from Galahad’s bag and hit him. “Yes. And my vision won’t steady, so I think I’m in shock. That’s probably why I sound annoying.”

“You—” Everything suddenly boiled fast and crammed up into the back of Lancelot’s throat, then collapsed just as violently. With it went the tension in his shoulders and arms, so that a dagger shivered out of his trembling hands onto the mattress. Before he could accidentally do anything, he flattened his palms against the bed and leaned over it, trying to catch his breath. Maybe, said the nasty dark voice in Lancelot’s head, Owein wasn’t the only one succumbing to shock. “Well, you’re definitely my cousin.”

“You’re still calling me that, even though I couldn’t stop—”

“—don’t even start with that,” Lancelot sighed. He hesitated, then put a hand on Owein’s good shoulder and squeezed.

If he were really as clever with words as people told him he was, he would’ve known what to say to go along with that. But his verbal slyness was limited and these circumstances were achingly not within those limits, and so Lancelot just did what he could and hoped it would suffice.

Thankfully, Bercilak chose to show up then, and his generous, talkative nature soon took over. Lancelot gratefully surrendered Owein to his care, and was seeing them off when Owein shot a diffident question at him. “So what about the Briton woman?”

“She’s staying, I think. Though where she spends the night is anyone’s guess…” Right about then, Lancelot realized that that comment might not be appropriate, given the fragility of Owein’s current state of being. Sympathy was, beyond a doubt, not his specialty.

However, fortune decided to be kind to him here. Owein dredged up a wan but conspiratorial grin from somewhere. “Ah, well. She was worth the night. And so it takes mentioning her to get you back to normal…”

“It damned well doesn’t take _her_ ,” Lancelot snorted, stepping back inside. All mentioning Guinevere did was remind him that he had Arthur to tackle next, and the way his stomach went queasy and his nerves twitched at that thought was anything but normal.

* * *

“Percival’s reserving judgment,” Gawain said, rolling up the maps inside each other. He carefully tied them off with a strip of sinew, then surrendered to the yawn that’d been clawing at his throat all night. As much as he wanted to get out and _do_ something before his frustration and anger created something awful, he was glad they weren’t moving till the late afternoon. He needed the sleep.

“Understandable. He and Urien lost half their family to a Roman raid.” Galahad stood up and pressed the heels of his hand into the small of his back, stretching out the kinks. The fatigue was weaving fine red lines through the whites of his eyes, and dulling his temper to the point that he sounded almost sympathetic. “Urien’s going to be a bastard, though. So we’d better hope that tonight, Ammianus goes where Arthur says he will.”

A soft cooing in the corner made them both turn: Tristan dangled another tidbit into his hawk’s beak and whistle-coaxed her into taking it. The expression on Galahad’s face as he watched was…fondly annoyed, Gawain decided.

“Speaking of, where’d you send Arthur off to?” Galahad asked. He stepped backward a pace and flopped onto the bed; luckily for him, they’d used his tent and so he didn’t have to walk through half the camp before he could rest.

Yes, sleep sounded good. The last thing Gawain wanted was to prematurely transform into a bitter old wrinkle like Gorlois.

“Lancelot asked to see him.” Tristan lifted his hawk so the bounce Galahad made wouldn’t jostle her much, then shifted her to a nearby perch. 

There were rods of varying thicknesses bristling from all over the tent—that was new. And fascinating, since Elaine had been after Galahad for literal years just to change how he made—or didn’t make—his bed, and yet here he was, letting his furniture sprout sticks.

“And what is Lancelot doing? He stares at that man like he’s never seen one before, and his temper’s—well, it’s never been good, but now it’s spectacularly bad. I thought he was going to strangle Urien a few times.” Flopping over, Galahad toed off his boots and began pulling at his clothes, loosening them for sleep. “Though some of that was because Urien’s a jackass and hinted Lancelot didn’t give a shit about the cousins he’d just lost. Oh, is that what? Planning to flick horseshit in Urien’s eye?”

One shoulder lifted and fell in pretended lack of knowledge, while Tristan’s hand strayed down to tangle in Galahad’s curls. “No. Actually, I think he’s having a fit of conscience.”

“ _Lancelot_?” Galahad stared. Read some kind of confirmation in Tristan’s face and snorted, rolling over to face Gawain. “Bet he’s taking _that_ badly.”

“Very,” was Tristan’s dry, perceptive reply. He glanced at Gawain, who nodded in agreement while acting as if he wasn’t feeling uncomfortable, watching the unconscious closeness between them.

“See you in the afternoon, then. Galahad, either wake up on time, or I’ll let Lancelot take out his temper on you.” With that, Gawain tucked the roll of maps beneath his arm and walked out. 

Sleep. Bed. It was comfortable and warm, and if it was also empty—well, life never gave one person everything they needed. Gawain could make do. He had—

\--to do a better job at not running into things. People. Though whoever this was had a body with leanness and soft curves in exactly the right places. And…she wasn’t Sarmatian.

“I’m sorry,” Guinevere panted, disentangling herself with an apologetic smile. She patted at her hair, which was soaking up the sun to show bright glints in its rich darkness, and pulled at her disheveled clothing, which was rather…open. Lovely breasts. “I didn’t—oh, tell me I didn’t rip any of those. They were such beautiful maps.”

“Ah…” Gawain quickly checked “…no, they’re fine. A bit bent, but nothing that can’t be fixed.”

The smile flipped into a frown that put a little wrinkle between her fine brows; she leaned forward and ran her hands slowly over the maps. “Are you sure?”

“Well, yes.” It seemed that Gawain’s mind was still a bit shaken and so his mouth wanted to stutter with it. With an effort, he suppressed that ridiculousness. “You can see for yourself, if you don’t mind coming with me. I’d rather not unroll them out here.”

“Oh, not at all. Would your tent be better? Arthur and Lancelot are too busy talking to tell me where we’re staying now.” She smiled again, and stepped a little nearer.

* * *

To Arthur’s complete lack of surprise, Guinevere was waiting for him. He let go of the tent flap and came all the way out, while a glowering Urien and a curious, wary Geraint closely shadowed him. “I know,” he murmured in Briton.

“Somehow I doubt that,” she hissed back, falling in step beside him. They were heading to Lancelot’s tent; Arthur had absently memorized the way two days ago and so he’d refused the offer of a guide. Instead, he’d received guards.

Guinevere kept to Arthur’s left side, opposite of Urien, but she had chosen that position more out of habit than out of fear of the surly knight, who clearly didn’t trust them. There, she wouldn’t be in the way if Arthur should need to draw his sword. Old habits that were in demand once more…

No, that was only true in his case. She hadn’t ever believed the fighting had ended, and she hadn’t pretended that she could step out of it. She’d been restless and full of angry grief in Britain, seeing how low her land had been brought and knowing how long it would be before it was capable of putting up any challenge, and so she’d sneaked Arthur’s dispatches, reading them for news of other wars. When she had asked to come with him, claiming that she wanted to see the world and that he needed company, he’d known very well what were her true motivations. Guinevere hadn’t only come to find another battlefield against Rome—she was not, despite what many thought, a cold person—but that was the reason why she’d left Britain, and the only reason. Arthur wasn’t arrogant or foolish enough to believe she would have left for merely him.

“I can’t leave. And not only because I—if I were to cross the border, the Romans would want me to tell everything I could about the Sarmatians. If I refused, they’d probably kill me.” Yes, he’d fought with them, alongside them and trusted his back to their swords, but to a Roman, war was a business. It didn’t mean or promise anything farther than the present.

“So don’t cross the border. There’s more than one way out. You’ve told these people—” Guinevere refrained from gesturing around them, but just barely “—all they need to know, and you should be able to exact a price for it. Or do they not have the honor you told me they did?”

There wasn’t far to walk, and especially when both of them were rushing to keep ahead of their tempers. Arthur could already see the top of Lancelot’s residence, but he wasn’t yet ready to find out what welcome he would receive there. Somehow…somehow what he was doing wasn’t to Lancelot’s taste, either. “Perhaps they’ve learned, like the Britons, what honor costs a man,” Arthur retorted, deliberately taking a wrong turn.

“And perhaps I can see that that wasn’t the reason you told them the Romans’ plans. You didn’t do that to save your skin—of all the people in the world, you’re the one that cares least for keeping that intact.” She grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop, for once not thinking about the impression she was giving to her audience. And it looked as if their two followers were mightily interested, even if they couldn’t understand a word of the conversation. “Damn you, this isn’t your war!”

“It’s not yours, either.” He jerked his arm free and resumed walking; this path would also take them to their destination, but it would take longer. Just as well, considering that Guinevere would not let go until she was satisfied, and that Arthur would rather deal separately with her and Lancelot.

Snarling, she hurried after him and twined her arm around his so he couldn’t pull away. Then her glare softened to sardonic bitterness, as if she’d suddenly understood something. “You’re wandering on purpose. And yet you have no problem seeking out the greater pain—Arthur, what is wrong with your priorities? You’re the most intelligent man I’ve ever met and yet you can’t seem to keep your head in order.”

“My head—”

She was stepping sideways now, still holding onto him and thus having to twist awkwardly to keep up. But when he slowed to accommodate her, Guinevere shot him an insulted look and made him resume his previous pace. “Your head is still in Rome. You still feel like you’re betraying her—that’s why this _is_ my war, and why it’s not yours. And why you’re doing this. It’s not honor or survival. It’s you taking responsibility for a pack of dead horse-lovers and you needing to hurt for it. You utter idiot.”

Her words stung, burrowing beneath Arthur’s skin and wrapping about his throat till the muscles closed. He put up a hand and pressed it against his neck while rolling his head, trying to force relaxation before the snap came. But it was too late for that; his tongue was too quick at picking up the snap. “And where am I to go? Where wouldn’t I see Rome?”

“You said—”

“Byzantium is Roman and Christian. Deeply Christian.” The old dregs of faith rose and left their sour remains in Arthur’s mouth. He couldn’t even curse God for this, because he didn’t believe in Him now, and even if he had become the kind to rely upon a scapegoat, he had no substitute for God. “Alexandria is more secular, but still Roman. There’s nowhere in the world that Rome can’t reach, so there’s no point in running. Or didn’t I invade your lands enough times for you to see that?”

Guinevere’s breath caught, ripping itself on her teeth that audibly snapped together. Her fingers abruptly stabbed into his arm, hard enough to leave black marks later, and she swung her other arm down to her hip. Arthur noticed all of that, and he was sorry to have brought up that part of their past, but he refused to dodge or otherwise shield himself. Behind them, metal and leather rub-rasped. One of the Sarmatians was inclined to intervene, at least reflexively. A good sign, Arthur’s practical side informed him. That was about the only side of him that was still functioning without change.

After a long, long moment, Guinevere removed her hand from her hip and from the longsword she had strapped there. “I love you enough to not kill you for that. I wish you’d respect that, if you won’t respect yourself.”

Then she released his arm and all the blood rushed back into it. The drain on the rest of him was sudden and sharp enough so that Arthur’s mind didn’t clear until after she’d left, and after Lancelot had come out to glare away Urien and Geraint.

“If I knew how to love you better, I would. But I don’t and I won’t use you to learn for myself,” Arthur murmured, drawing a deep breath so he could catch the fading of her scent.

It was almost a perfect joke, how that problem and the problem he had with finding a place for himself were so similar.

“I see I should take up Briton, or whatever it is you speak in that country,” Lancelot said. He folded his hands together behind his back and stretched his arms, bending over to make his shoulders pop, then straightened. Fatigue was rapidly slicing away at his face, which was still as handsome as ever but now in a way that slashed at Arthur’s sight. “You haven’t eaten, have you? There’s food and koumiss, and my bed since I won’t be using it.”

There would be talking as well, and to judge by the way Lancelot was having a hard time directly looking at him, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Arthur started to open his mouth, then settled for merely nodding and following the other man.

* * *

When he came, Tristan let his knees slide out from under him so his weight would gradually come down on Galahad. He laid there for a moment, absently licking along the man’s sweat-soaked hairline, and then pulled out to collapse on the side.

“Only time you’re ever awkward,” Galahad said, sounding amused. And tired, which accounted for his lack of rancor. He rolled onto one hip and tucked his head into Tristan’s shoulder, apparently going to sleep.

Tristan’s count hit twenty-three when Galahad lifted his head again, a more familiar irritation gracing his face. “Now what? You hear a far-off disturbance in the land?” he grumbled.

The cuff Tristan gave him met a head-butt and then a mouth twisting around to nibble at Tristan’s wrist, which turned it into a slow, soothing petting. Something about teasing the tangles from Galahad’s ever-mussed hair satisfied the part of Tristan that disliked stillness, however much he was said to mimic it, and that needed to know all the threads that knotted into a life. Lives. He had the patience for waiting, but not for not knowing.

“The—well, what are we supposed to call him now? Lancelot’s? Anyway, what do you think of him?” Galahad’s question seemed to be sincere enough, though his intent was less about determining Tristan’s opinion than about trying to get Tristan’s problem solved and quickly so he could sleep in peace.

“I think you should call him by his name, until either he or Lancelot say differently. And I think he means what he says. He wouldn’t look so pained about it if he were lying.” Unfortunately for Galahad, what Tristan had was not a problem, which he was just as capable as solving, but a thought. “You think we should let him stay.”

One eyebrow went up and Galahad stopped biting at Tristan’s wrist. He started to answer, then took back the words. When he finally did speak, he did so with uncharacteristic slowness and care. “If he does know what he says he does, then we’ll need him. We’ve been working for years and years, building up our strength and trying to do the same with our wits. But we just—I don’t know, maybe a Roman’s brain is put together differently. We can’t think like them, not enough to _out_ think them. It…I was listening, and everything Arthur said made so much sense that I was annoyed I hadn’t thought of it.”

“Urien dislikes it immensely.” The bedding beneath Tristan’s hip was sticky and wet and beginning to feel highly unpleasant. He pushed himself up, absently wondering why he always ended up on that, and folded over the furs till he was on dry bedding.

“Urien thinks everything should be like the old ways. And he’s a pain that way because we have to keep him and his idiocy alive,” Galahad muttered, nuzzling his way down Tristan’s arm. He reached behind himself and flopped over a rich gray wolfskin so the chill wouldn’t steal the heat from them too quickly. “I want to see the Romans run out of here. I don’t really care too much how it’s done.”

“Even if it costs us who we are?” Tristan asked. Normally that thought would have never entered his mind, because he knew very well who he was and thus he didn’t suffer the kind of uncertainty that others seemed to. But lately there’d been so many predictions he should have been able to make, and yet he’d made the wrong ones…he’d thought Galahad wouldn’t have stood this long with him.

For once, it seemed as if Galahad was reading the thoughts as well as the words in the air. He snorted and gently poked Tristan under the chin with his nose. “First you’ve got to be alive, and free, in order to be able to make that choice. Stop worrying and go to sleep—you never worry, and when you do, then I start to get frightened.”

Which Tristan didn’t want to do, lest this close warmth be driven from him into the cold. So he turned over to lay an arm around Galahad’s waist, and he slept.

* * *

“You can leave.” Lancelot finished knotting the straps around his pack and then came over to the bed to sit across from Arthur. When he folded his leg under him, he did so with grace that was unpolished, raw. He wasn’t showing off now, or trying to make a good impression on Arthur. He was being honest. “I heard what was said. But I believe you’re telling the truth, and these are the lands of my tribe. If I say you’re going to leave safely, then you’ll leave safely.”

Despite the sleepless night, the sudden breaking twist in his life—or perhaps because of it—Arthur found himself liking what he saw now far more than anything he had before. It was a stupid, unfocused, telling thought to have, and Guinevere must have been exceptionally tired or distracted to have missed this extra loop in the knot.

“That wouldn’t be very good for your standing among your people, and from what I understand, you’re in some difficulties there.” Arthur was being honest as well, but it wasn’t a fair trade; his truth-telling always seemed to hurt people. No, he was refraining from lies because he’d unknowingly mouthed them for so long and now, when his eyes were clear enough for him to see what he’d done, he couldn’t bring himself to voice them any longer.

And perhaps he was tired in his soul, if he had one—tired of forcing himself to look beyond the hell and keep his eyes fixed on the heaven. On the promise of heaven. All his life, others had told him that he was too much of an idealist, too prone to optimism, and that constant repetition wore on the most willful and firm of men. Which Arthur was not—he’d never been able to completely ignore the mud beneath his feet. As time had gone on, he’d had his head dragged down to look for longer and longer periods, and now the weight was too much for him to lift. He’d been wrong about God, about Rome, about ideals and—there had been children among the dead. Children who had playfully eavesdropped and giggled at him only the day before, and a man he’d taught to fight had had them killed.

Guinevere wouldn’t have understood if Arthur had tried to explain it: how fellow officers became brothers and sometimes sons, and how they could be transferred thousands of miles away but still have that connection of shared experiences and goals and instruction. Or at least, that had been what Arthur had thought. The last root to anything that he’d had left, roughly severed like the charred wrist he’d seen first upon riding up.

Lancelot had had some retort ready, but he’d swallowed it and instead had chosen to scrutinize Arthur. Now he finally produced a conclusion, while his hands moved away the remains of their hasty meal. “You don’t do this often—trying to make people angry so they’ll let you be. You’re not very good at it.”

“You sound as if you’ve some expertise on the subject.” Traveling with Guinevere seemed to have shortened Arthur’s response time to sarcasm, though it’d not done anything to make him like it. He winced and looked away, trying to formulate an apology.

There wasn’t time to deliver it before Lancelot replied. “Let me worry about myself. If you want to go—”

“Thank you for the offer, but I won’t be needing it.” Arthur started to rise, intending to make his bed in the corner, but he was quickly pulled back down.

“It’s not your fault. You don’t have an obligation. You—damn it, you’ve had this argument with someone. You’re not even listening to me, and it was my damned family!” With a snarl that was eerily like Guinevere’s, Lancelot shoved Arthur backwards and used that same motion to push himself on his feet. He began pacing around the tent, occasionally jerking his hand towards Arthur to convey some kind of accusation. “What do you care, anyway? Do you know anything about Sarmatia? Do you even know what you’re trying to save? Or are you just doing this to massage your damned pointless guilt?”

And though Arthur had thought he’d been prepared, his temper showed him otherwise. He’d dragged Lancelot back to the bed before he even realized why his hand was curled, and then he couldn’t let go of the man’s wrist because it was all he could hold onto. “Why aren’t I allowed to feel guilty? To help? I trained Ammianus and made sure he lived to fight here—I’ve been—”

“You’re the most selfish man I’ve ever met,” Lancelot shot back. He yanked hard on his arm, but Arthur’s fingers had frozen themselves around it and so all he accomplished was to jerk them closer together. “You, you, you—Arthur, _it isn’t you_. For—you hadn’t even been born when Rome and Sarmatia first went to war. You think this is the only atrocity that’s happened? It’s not, and there would’ve been something even if you’d slaughtered Ammianus in Britain.”

“I didn’t see Sarmatia at war, that’s true enough. I—I didn’t. It has been, but what I saw was it at peace. What I thought I saw. What I’ll remember having seen.” The anger dropped away, shaved into nothing by the heavy cold realization Arthur had staring at Lancelot. At a man he’d laid with, laughed with and now at a man he was seeing go to war.

It was a reversal and a comparison that he’d never been in a position to see before, and suddenly he understood why Guinevere had refused to stay behind. Why she’d refused to bind herself to him, when one of them would have had to make the other wait behind while they went off to fight.

“So you should leave while you’ve still got such a nice memory.” Lancelot was slowly curling his arm against his chest so that Arthur had to keep moving toward him, though paradoxically, he was leaning backwards. His voice had gone low and ragged, and he looked as if he was about to snap and that he knew it, but that he didn’t know in which direction to go.

“The ‘nice memory’ is why I can’t leave.” And another echo of Guinevere stole into Arthur’s words; he owed her more than he would probably ever realize for staying with him while his eyes opened. Though she had left him after that, and so wouldn’t see how he became accustomed to seeing; a trace of wistfulness plucked at Arthur then, but it was swiftly overwhelmed by the absolutely clarity with which he understood why he was staying.

He put his other hand down for support and leaned to follow Lancelot. “I saw my mother killed. My father died before her—the letter telling us is one of the first memories I have. Sarmatia is the only place where I’ve seen peace in my entire life. Do you think that’s worth defending?”

“I—think—” Lancelot’s voice was thicker, his words slurred “—that there’s still too much guilt here.”

And then he prevented Arthur from defending himself by clamping a hand on the back of Arthur’s head and ripping him across those last few inches of separating space.

The first frenzy of mouthing and biting and grappling at clothes that were so tardy about getting out of the way crested within moments, and then Arthur rose from Lancelot’s intoxicating mouth to find his hands just finished baring the other man from the waist down and his head clear enough to think about what he’d just done. He did, remembering how it’d made him forget everything. And he bent back down to press his palms against Lancelot’s thighs and ignore the fingers tearing at his hair and to trace meaningless words on the skin jumping beneath his tongue.

“Wait—what are you—Arthur, you’re a Roman—”

“I should stop saying that. It’s a lie. Probably been so for the greater part of my life.” He turned his head to lay his cheek against Lancelot’s leg, then nuzzled upwards. Came back to lick away the pink rasping warmth his stubble had raised in the skin and kept licking till he’d just touched the prick rising under his attentions.

The fingers tangled in his hair suddenly jerked, hard enough to make him look up, and he met wild, angry-hungry eyes. “You fucking idiot. You’ll have to kill Romans. And it’s not so easy to just stop thinking of them as your people.”

“Then I’ll kill Romans, and suffer the consequences. I’m used to it.” An edge crept into Arthur’s voice, and he didn’t know how to remove it. “I spent fifteen years killing my mother’s people and had nothing to show for it but a broken country and a broken faith. But now there’s nothing left to be broken.”

It was ebbing away, clouding and tarnishing, and Arthur was losing his grip on that moment of comprehension. He clutched harder, refusing—epiphanies like that were so rare in his life, and this one was an understanding that he thought he’d never know again. Before it could slip away, he chased it.

He gagged for a moment, never having done this before. And he knew he was being sloppier than Guinevere had been when she’d taken him into her mouth—her throat. His throat was dry from slight panic and that made the swallowing more difficult, messier so that he couldn’t keep his lips tight around Lancelot’s prick. Though it didn’t seem to make too much of a difference to the other man, whose eyes squeezed shut and whose nails scored deep painful grooves in Arthur’s scalp and who, once he’d stopped resisting, let himself fall shockingly apart in Arthur’s mouth.

Lancelot slumped backward as the spasms ran from his hips up to his shoulders, head thunking softly on the end of the bed. His hands slowly slid out of Arthur’s hair, which let Arthur rise just in time to see the ache in the other man’s gaze.

“You’re going to change your mind when your head clears,” Lancelot said.

“I won’t.” Arthur swallowed once more, trying to get rid of the unexpected bitterness of the taste. He absently wiped off his mouth with his hand and started to rub it on his leg, then stopped, unaccountably embarrassed.

The only warning Lancelot gave was how fast his eyes flicked to Arthur’s hand. Then he was up and his hands were dropping the rest of their clothes on the ground, and he was savaging Arthur’s mouth while harsh words cut their way out from between them. “No, you won’t. Because you make a decision and you don’t fucking back down from it, even if it’s wrong and it’ll get you killed. I can see that, and you’re a fool, and—and—damn you, come here.”

They broke a lamp for the oil. Lancelot wrapped one arm around Arthur’s neck, baring his own to Arthur’s mouth, and fucked himself on his fingers, stretched and twisted and his nails clawed into Arthur’s back as if they wanted to rip off the scars there. His head stayed back so that Arthur couldn’t see his eyes though he could get drunk on the sweat of Lancelot’s skin, the quiet trembling and the vicious pants. The violent way Lancelot shoved himself down on Arthur’s prick and rocked against him, which made Arthur try to calm things to less pain by running his hands over Lancelot. But that only made it worse, and so they ended in falling to the bed to writhe and lash and crack each other open, never mind whose cock was in whom.

“You should have left,” Lancelot murmured later, when he was clinging to Arthur so tightly that Arthur couldn’t roll so he wasn’t crushing Lancelot. “You should have, because I wasn’t going to walk away and now I won’t let you.”

“I should have left many things long before I did, but I don’t count this as one of them.” Arthur took the deepest breath he could, forcing Lancelot’s hold to loosen a little, and quickly slid his hands between them. Using that to space them, he wriggled out of the other man and got his weight mostly onto the bed, then removed his hands so they collapsed back together.

A sigh slipped from Lancelot’s lips. He slitted his eyes to give Arthur a look that strove to be detached and penetrating. “How much of ‘this’ is me and how much of it is the memory of peace and how much of it is the guilt?”

It was a question that needed a moment to sort out, and Arthur did so. He hoped Lancelot didn’t mistake that for hesitation.

“I’ll defend the memory. I’ll kill because of the part that resulted from my doing. And I’ll stay for you.” Arthur lifted his hand and drew a fingertip along the clenching muscle in Lancelot’s jaw. “I can do the other two without having to be here, just as Guinevere can do them for Britain without being there.”

For a long time, Lancelot looked at him without speaking or moving. Then a humorless smile flickered. “You’re new at this, too. Usually people know better than to be direct about it.”

“Usually they do.” If they’d met a bare two years ago, Arthur wouldn’t have been. If they’d met then, everything would have been reversed and he would have carried Lancelot out the door himself; he’d been fortunate in that Guinevere was stubborn and had scaled the wall to meet him when he’d walked back into his rooms. But she’d never forgotten what he had done, and it had always stayed between them, up to and past when _she_ had walked out on him, and he’d let her. 

It wasn’t two years ago. Arthur was not the man he’d been then, and he was not going to make that mistake twice. Lancelot still didn’t believe him, but that didn’t change anything for Arthur.

“I hope you’re ready to see everything explode tonight, then,” Lancelot finally muttered, ducking down and tucking his head beneath Arthur’s chin. He was asleep—or feigning sleep—before Arthur could reply.

* * *

Gawain was still a little in shock at waking up not only from a good sleep but also next to a warm, pliant body. And the quick, devastatingly efficient greeting Guinevere had given his prick hadn’t helped clear his head. So he was understandably slow to make sense of things when he walked in to see her punching Lancelot.

“What the—” Percival had come in just behind Gawain and was equally transfixed. Which made Gawain feel a little better about himself.

Taken off-guard, Lancelot stumbled back and grabbed for one of his swords—

\--only to have Arthur yank his wrist down. The other man dropped it almost immediately and ignored Lancelot’s offended cursing to turn on Guinevere. Those two had a fast, low conversation in Briton, but it was obvious Guinevere was not happy.

“I thought we were supposed to be fighting the Romans,” Galahad snapped, stalking inside. He seemed intent on finding out what the two foreigners were saying, but his eye snagged on Gawain and he spun about to stare at Gawain’s neck.

Oh. That woman had _teeth_. Flushing, Gawain slapped his hand over the spot and tried to make up an excuse involving shaving, but it was too late.

His cousin gaped. Started to ask who it was, but then everyone heard Arthur’s annoyed slip into traveler’s Latin; whatever blood he had in him, his unconscious habits were still Roman. “You’re angry at me when you were doing the same?”

“It’s not the same!” Guinevere snarled, and then she stalked out while everyone was eying Gawain with renewed amazement.

Well, everyone except Lancelot, who rubbed at his sore cheek and glowered at Arthur. “Make her stop sleeping with my cousins.”

“Gawain’s only one by marriage, and distant as well. I don’t think he counts.” Initial surprise over, Galahad seemed more amused than anything else; Tristan was rubbing off on him. Then again, he and Lancelot had been at each other’s throats for as long as Gawain could remember, so it wasn’t too unexpected that Galahad would completely forget about the present situation to have a laugh at the man.

And, along with Gawain who was still working on his first shock, completely missing the other implication of Arthur’s slip. Though Percival and Arthur caught it just fine; the one looked as if he needed to sit down on something and the other had worry and embarrassment warring over which was making him look more frantic.

“Lancelot…what were you doing with the—” Percival started.

“—later. We have Romans to catch, just in case anyone forgot.” Glare firmly fixed in place, Lancelot hefted his things and marched out.

Gawain just managed to sidestep, and then he almost ran into Arthur going after Lancelot, though at least Arthur had the grace to apologize. Percival had better reflexes and had spun to keep pace on Lancelot’s left side.

“Are you insane?” he hissed. “You…a Roman, and we aren’t sure yet…your tribe to…”

They were moving too fast for Gawain to hear. He briefly weighed the attention jogging after them would attract with the need to know what was going on, then ran after them.

“He’s blood of my damned tribe and he’s helping. And if Ammianus isn’t where he says, you can watch me kill him. Now shut the fuck up and get on your horse; we don’t have the time to talk about this now.”

Even from a yard away, Gawain could clearly see the way Lancelot’s face twisted when he mentioned killing Arthur. And he could’ve been a mile away and still have seen how Lancelot deliberately kept himself between Arthur and the rest of the Sarmatians, and how Arthur was calmly noting who tried to get behind Lancelot.

Fuck. Yes, they really needed this now.

For Lancelot’s sake, Gawain hoped Arthur was right. Actually, for all of their sakes, because since Ammianus had been so damned good at tracking down their leaders, Lancelot was the best strategist they had left. Bercilak might have been head of Lancelot’s tribe, but he didn’t hesitate to yield the ground to Lancelot when it came to warfare; that was a delicate balance to maintain, given how usually better fighting skills meant a political threat, but no one had ever known Lancelot as caring for much besides his own well-being and so no one had ever believed he’d have an interest in the greater responsibility to others that came with greater power. 

It was almost funny. All the planning, the careful organizing, and what everything came down to was the part that couldn’t be controlled or predicted: the people.

Gawain didn’t laugh. He mounted his horse, rode to the men he was leading, and prayed that nothing would tip the balance against them.


	5. Faith

Nervous didn’t describe Guinevere. She had been reared on suffering and she’d seen death looking back at her far too many times to be afraid of it now. And anyway, her position was good with prospects of bettering it: she’d had no problem convincing the Sarmatians where her loyalties laid. Gawain was either still dazed, or he didn’t mind that she was chatting up Geraint, and Geraint obviously didn’t care a whit about Guinevere’s origin. Moreover, he was in charge of the archers and he was mightily impressed with her aim.

So she was not nervous. She was, however, worrying about Arthur to the point that her hands were shaking. Guinevere kept them pressed flat to the saddle as she let herself slip back from Geraint and come up beside Arthur.

He seemed calm enough, which in itself was a reason to be concerned. Arthur never stopped worrying, and Guinevere never bothered with it—at least, on the surface. When they exchanged roles, then she knew something was wrong with the world. “You’re a fool.”

“I know that. You tell me daily.” His eyes flicked once to note her approach, then returned to watching the valley below. It housed a trail the Sarmatians only used during the winter, and supposedly Ammianus would be coming down it before his men split up again. Hopefully, because if that didn’t happen, then Arthur was going to be in serious trouble.

And—Guinevere gritted her teeth and thought of all the effort she’d put forth so far to get herself into such a nice position. Then she thought of Britain, and what it meant to her…but inevitably, she was also reminded of what Arthur had done there, and of how much he’d saved for her. Including her life, since she never would’ve gotten the right treatment for her fever without his intervention.

She wasn’t in the habit of acknowledging debts that didn’t suit her goals, but then, Arthur’s specialty seemed to be turning people inside-out. First proof of that was how Lancelot couldn’t stop looking over at Arthur, raw nerves jumping in his eyes. And second proof was how Guinevere was contemplating—

\--no, how she was resigning herself to the fact that she would intervene if they came after Arthur. The sourness in her mouth etched a point in her tongue. “If you’re wrong about this, then you’ve just put Lancelot in an extremely uncomfortable position.”

“I’m not wrong about this,” Arthur said. He straightened and checked something on the horizon, which was undisturbed as far as she could see, then nodded.

He really was the most inconvenient man: years spent bowing and scraping to ideals not worth the shit on his boot, and now that he had finally gotten himself a backbone, he was using it at entirely the wrong time.

And for the wrong person, the bitterness inside Guinevere whispered. The thought was clever and quick and insidious, and before she knew it, it’d broken her composure. “What is so special about him? Yes, he’s smart and nice to look at, but that’s a thousand others? What—why—”

Arthur’s face spasmed. His fingers momentarily clenched on his reins, making his horse dance a little, and that in turn got Lancelot’s attention. The bastard glanced at Arthur, then glared at Guinevere as if she was the one that had put them in this mess. If she’d known, she would have suggested someone else.

“Why did you push him at me?” The echo of Guinevere’s thought, verbalized by Arthur’s rough mutter, cut harder than the solidity of any sword would have. “You’re not a fool, and you never do things on a whim. You picked him for a reason.”

“Maybe it was availability. He had ‘whore’ written all over him when we first ran into him.” But the sarcasm was hollow, with nothing to support it, and they both knew it. Guinevere swallowed the urge to hit Arthur for putting her on the defensive—damn the man, but he was the only one who could ever do that.

By now, they knew each other far too well, so that all Arthur had to do was to look at her. Normally he would’ve been too busy defending himself or feeling as if he deserved the verbal whipping to let himself do so, but neither of those conditions were apparent in his calm, unmoving stance. Though Guinevere had spent long days and nights hoping he would become this, now she regretted it. And yes, she was angry that it was in this place and time, and not back in Britain when…not back in Britain.

She disliked dwelling on jealousy because of how weak and pathetic that emotion made her feel, so she changed the subject. “Something you don’t seem to realize is that your decision’s going beyond you. You stay and—”

“And Lancelot will have problems with the other Sarmatians, and you’ll have to worry about me.” For the first time since they’d left camp, a trace of the old Arthur appeared: regret shadowed his face and his shoulders hunched in a deep sigh. But unlike before, it only lasted a moment. Then he was back to watching the deepening dark of the sky. “I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone. But you and I have both seen how possible that is.”

“And you claim this isn’t another attempt to get yourself punished on earth, since you no longer believe in a hell.” Guinevere snapped off a hard laugh in hopes that that would get through, but no luck.

Instead, Arthur turned around and let her see everything. The scars peeking from his collar, the tired paleness beneath his tan, but also the strange, impenetrable serenity in his eyes. It was not the same as the way he looked before a battle, when his rage was up and so was his fear of himself. Nor was it the same as the way he’d looked after he’d caught the priest’s whip on its second strike, everything that had given meaning to his life collapsing, or when he’d been watching the shore of Britain vanish into the distance. It was calm, but it was not dead. On the contrary, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him this alive, and not hesitant about it.

“I can see why you’d think that. But Guinevere, I swear to you on my father’s sword, that isn’t the reason.” As he spoke, Arthur leaned down so she wouldn’t miss a single word. She couldn’t have anyway, not with how deep their impacts were on her blood and mind. “I want to live. I want that because now I know what would come after the fighting, what I would be waiting for. But when I die, I don’t want to die for nothing.”

“So you’ll go by the sword,” she replied, feeling both proud and spiteful. “You’ll die in war instead of in peace, sitting among scrolls somewhere while the greatest thinkers of the world extend the reach of men’s knowledge. While your days are long and sunny and filled with the little pleasures of life, while your grandchildren give you the sweet slipping into the dark that your father never had.”

His eyes flickered black and his jaw tightened, but after a moment, Arthur nodded. “If you had my choice, then how would you choose?”

“I’m not you.” She couldn’t look at him any longer, and had to drop her eyes to where her fingers were knotting themselves in her horse’s mane.

The rustling indicated that he was shrugging and sitting back. “No, you’re better. And yet you’re trying to save me while keeping the worse fate for yourself. Guinevere—I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be content with only enough, that I couldn’t be content with you. But we make our choices in life and we live with them, and that’s all that I’m trying to do.”

Arthur wasn’t letting himself see the whole truth—at least that hadn’t changed. Because the explanation for the difference in himself was not simply that he’d chosen, but that this time, he’d chosen completely of his own free will. He hadn’t had any external influences to force him towards one path or the other. No, he _wanted_ to live with this choice.

The air had only started to cool with the night, but it felt as if Guinevere were breathing particles of ice. They were sharp and drew little hot beads of blood in her lungs so that she felt she was drowning as she backed away.

For a moment, she couldn’t think. And then she clamped down on herself and made herself, made her mind work past the sheer emotion. He’d made his decision. He’d done it in a way that she’d been hoping he would—perhaps the results were not what she would have wanted, but she and he no longer shared common desires. She couldn’t afford to fight him—not if she wanted to keep fighting for Britain’s sake—and so she had to let this battle pass from her.

Guinevere let her head droop a little and breathed in, slowly, while her insides unraveled. And then she breathed out and looked up, seeing the new world stretching out in front of her.

“Cold?” Geraint sidled up her left side, nearly spooking her into stabbing him.

She caught herself and managed a small, distant smile while she regarded him: big, bluff, not bad-looking. A considerable number of men following him, and high enough to have a say in what went on. Neither he nor Gawain had the kind of temperament that would see them any higher than they already were, but…it would be good to keep him on her side.

He wasn’t Arthur. And Arthur was right—she hadn’t and wouldn’t settle for merely enough, either. Guinevere smiled a little wider at Geraint, and silently began to loosen her hold on that other dream. “A little. But the battle’s sure to warm me up.”

* * *

A half-hour after sunset, the first Roman soldiers marched into the valley and Lancelot almost shouted his thanks at them, because that meant he wouldn’t have to turn against his own people. Brave words aside, there was no way he could’ve picked up a sword against Arthur, even if the man was offering himself.

And he probably would have, the idiot. Of all the men in the world, it would be a noble not-Roman Roman who’d finally grounded Lancelot. The most ironic part probably was that, with the taste of Arthur still lingering in his mouth, Lancelot could hardly remember why he’d been so determined to stay loose.

“So he was right,” came Urien’s grudging comment. “Why aren’t we going?”

“Because we’re waiting for them to spread out and make easy targets of themselves,” Gawain snapped back. “Shut up and let them. You’ll get your chance to kill soon enough.”

Right. Because when he was floating high above, Lancelot couldn’t see any details and thus it was easier to just let things pass in and out of his life. But now that he had come down and had gotten to learn every inch, every smooth and every twisted rough patch of skin, he couldn’t leap back into his old life.

“I suppose he’s staying, then.” Somewhere along the line, Galahad had ridden up without Lancelot even noticing. Either the man was finally deigning to gain some maturity, or he was absorbing the qualities of his bedmate. “Not a bad idea, having a tame Roman around.”

“Call him that again and Tristan will be picking you out of the stars,” Lancelot snapped. Far too loudly; he winced and silently urged the Romans below to hurry up so he would have something to do besides make a fool of himself.

Rocked back, the other man blinked at Lancelot’s vehemence. But instead of choosing any of the innumerable possible taunts, Galahad merely regarded Lancelot with what appeared to be actual serious thought. Then he rode up close enough for them to talk without being overheard. “If I wasn’t seeing it, I never would’ve believed it. You’re not giving him up, are you?”

“More like the other way around.” Which was a half-lie, but Lancelot didn’t feel like explaining the truth to Galahad, no matter if the man had suddenly grown a sympathetic dimension.

In fact, what he felt like doing was yanking his horse down the hillside and spilling blood till there was enough to wash away every remnant of Rome left in Arthur. What he felt like doing was going back in time and not staring so long at that pretty woman in the marketplace, so that he would’ve gotten away before he and Arthur could’ve run into each other. So Arthur had found something worth fighting for—well, good for him. Really flattering to Lancelot. But Lancelot had found something worth protecting, and damned if that wasn’t making a mess out of his life. Sarmatia was always going to be under his feet and so he’d never felt afraid of losing it, though he’d feared having to see it trampled, but that stupid man staring at him was an entirely different matter.

Galahad coughed. “Stop looking at him like you’re going to eat him. There’s no time for it.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.” Angry and terrified and angry at his terror, Lancelot jerked himself back around and willed his body to stay that way.

“Oh, for…you’re acting worse than me. And I don’t even know where Tristan is, that sneaky son of a bitch.” The words were relatively light, but the tightening of Galahad’s jaw at the end of each was telling. He looked down at the valley, where the Roman line was almost completely stretched out, soldiers unworried and thus straggling so there were holes big enough for a horse to rampage through. But there were the sharp glints of sword and armor, and the nickering of the Romans’ cavalry mounts. “Bastard just said he was going to go check something, and by the time I turn around, the grass had already closed behind him.”

Lancelot resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and then the urge to laugh hysterically at the complete incongruity of their conversation. “Does your complaining have a point?”

“Just one. Get used to this. Everyone else has had to.” With that pithy bit of wisdom delivered, Galahad edged off and reached for his bow.

All around, everyone else was doing the same, and Lancelot’s hearing belatedly recognized Gawain’s whisper to prepare to fire. He gestured the order to his men, then took up his own.

Smooth, fine wood, worn to a perfect fit for his fingers. It had accompanied him through years and years of skirmishing and raiding and never quite ducking into the full thick of it. Now he was going to depend on it not only to carry him through something the dimensions of which he’d never come close to experiencing before, but also to…it’d been much easier when all he could’ve risked was himself. And he’d thought the looming weight had been frightening then.

The arrow slotted between his fingers, and then the strain on the string as he drew it back, sighted the arrow vibrated through his calluses as if they were nothing. Suddenly Lancelot was a boy again, feeling the unfamiliar shudder of the weapon shake against him and not quite sure what he was doing, but it was worse now because he _should’ve_ known what he was doing. The sky above housed a different war, and the amount he had to lose had abruptly grown beyond his sight. He—

\--bowstrings were singing and Lancelot shot with them, though he wasn’t ready. And he still wasn’t ready when his horse seemed to leap into thin air and he was weightless and a little panicky, as if he’d hadn’t loved that feeling just a few days before. But then the hooves hit dirt and the jolt slammed all the way up through him, shaking his swords into his hand and shaking the blood into his eyes so that he only saw red.

It wasn’t the same shade. It was brighter. More alive and more dead at the same time, and it had a significance now that hammered Lancelot’s pulse into his breath till both staggered, till his throat was raw from screaming and he had no idea how he was coming up with orders that sent knights cutting through the parts of the Roman column that were slow to recover from the arrow attack. He had _no idea_. And he did it anyway, because there was no way to stop.

* * *

To be honest, the relief was overwhelming and crushed out any other emotion. When the Romans rode into the valley, all Arthur felt was that.

And then he breathed, recognized the standards and the method of organization, recognized the _horse_ : Ammianus had always liked showy dappled grays, and never mind how visible they were in moonlight. That was when Arthur’s gut clenched and his fingers tightened on his bow so hard he almost broke it.

The Sarmatians were deathly silent lines of hunched blacks and browns to either side of Arthur, but one head lifted so pale cream skin could break the shadowy monotony. Guinevere had always had an eerie sense of when a rip was about to start inside of him.

He had fought beside some of the men down there, and he’d protected them as best he could. Sometimes he envied the ease with which Guinevere managed to discard the pieces of her life that she no longer needed; it seemed to keep her sleek and fit, whereas he often felt too old, too burdened, too ready to sink down and never stand up again.

But that was exactly what he was trying to do, Arthur reminded himself. Yes, he’d fought with them and yes, once upon a time they’d shared a life, but that life had turned out to be so disgraceful and treacherous that he’d left it. That he’d refrained from killing Guinevere—that he had taken her with him to this land, and he had known very well why she’d wanted to come. So he had already taken steps against his old life, whether or not his had been the feet that had actually done that. What he was doing now was finally acknowledging that for himself.

What he was doing now was finally finding a war in which he could live as well as die.

Arthur lifted the bow. He put an arrow to the string, and he sighted it at the figure he knew was Ammianus. And, as the memories of camaraderie in the hellish British marshes warred with those of a warm body curling in the grass, his fingers slowly let the arrow go.

It hit. For a second, Arthur felt as if he’d been punched in the chest, but then his horse started to move and its rocking gait forced air back into his lungs. The breath hurt. But it was easier to breathe through it, and the second one didn’t hurt at all because he took it as a gasp, watching something whirr past Lancelot’s head.

By the third one, he was no longer thinking about how he was breathing. He was thinking about the weight of Excalibur sliding into his palm, and the speed at which he was going down the steep slope versus the soldiers only yards in front of him. His foot touched his horse’s side ever-so-slightly and, well-trained beast that it was, it shifted over.

They cannonaded through a place where the panicking soldiers had abandoned their gear and Arthur felt his blade-point slash through something resistant and wet. He heard the scream waver-twist as he yanked his horse into the sharpest turn possible and came back before the officers could organize pikes, spears, some kind of defense. Excalibur cut another scream in the Roman line.

Romans. He was killing Romans. The familiar armor flashed accusingly at Arthur so he had to squint and then an arterial stream arced to catch him across the nose. He reflexively blew out, breathed in and was instantly submerged in the hot metallic scent. It wasn’t any different from the Briton blood that had splashed him for fifteen years. Or from the blood of his men as they’d died before him, or from the blood of the Sarmatian being cut down a yard from him. The difference wasn’t in the blood.

Arthur smacked more than wiped the back of his hand over his face, cleared it enough to see a point coming at him. He parried it with his sword and let the momentum twist his blade backward to cut down his attacker. A Roman, and he could live with that.

His second charge was diagonal through the infantry line and it carried him far down that before he could slow his horse enough to change directions. Somewhere nearby Guinevere was shrieking the high, bone-chilling Woad warcry, and to judge from the tone, she was letting herself sink into the dark enjoyment of killing.

Someone took a swing at his horse’s legs and it reared back to pulp the man’s skull with its forehooves. Arthur felt the pressure of the air shift behind him and he blindly struck behind, sword crunching into a body. Then his horse was on all fours again and spinning around so he sliced off a sword and the hand holding it before he even realized; he ducked from the blood and lunged forward to slash away a pair of Romans in the process of ambushing a downed knight.

“Thank—” Urien stopped and stared.

Though Arthur didn’t, because there wasn’t time to acknowledge anything. He saw the horseman coming and he kicked his heels back, dancing his horse into a space relatively clear of any debris. Ammianus, mouth open in a howl and sword upraised, came straight at him. Their swords clashed and slipped—a burn flashed across Arthur’s jaw—and then, in one of those stretched moments that happened in war, Arthur saw the recognition slowly crawl into Ammianus’ eyes.

Time snapped them apart and Arthur was grabbing at the saddle horn to stay on his horse when it swerved away. An infantryman shoved a pike at him and only failed to impale him because his counterswing was powered by enough desperation to cut off the pikehead. Then an arrow sprouted from the side of the man’s skull and Arthur jerked his attention away from that threat back to Ammianus, whom he was turning to meet a second time. He absently slapped at the thin warm stream running down his neck.

The other man hadn’t lowered his sword. He stared a moment longer, then snorted and shook his head—not in disbelief, but in resignation. For Arthur, it was the first time he’d ever done this, but former comrades-in-arms ending up on opposite sides was by no means a historical precedent in the Roman army. War was a business to them, after all.

It was only a moment that Ammianus took to get over his shock, but in that moment, worlds broke and worlds rose to take their place. And when their swords rattled each other a second time, nothing held Arthur back.

“Shouldn’t have let you in,” Ammianus panted, wheeling away and trying to come up Arthur’s other side. He cursed as Arthur’s block twisted in to leave a red tear in his gauntlet. “Told those jackasses they were being too trusting.”

Arthur ducked a little too slow and felt another cut lance over the side of his forehead. He suppressed the wince and kept going down to seize Ammianus’ reins; parrying the next slash had to be done one-handed and that felt as if it was going to break Arthur’s arm, but when he punched his sword-hilt into the other man’s eye, the limb was working fine. “Shouldn’t have attacked children where I’d hear about it.”

“You always were too soft.” The blow rocked Ammianus, almost sent him out of the saddle. But not all the way, and his horse leaped forward so the reins ripped from Arthur’s hands. “Taught me a lot, though. I’ll regret this.”

And he was coming up too fast for Arthur to turn, his sword aimed right at the back of Arthur’s neck, and—

\--and _no_. Not losing now. Arthur had to make the turn—was making it, somehow, and he slammed up Excalibur broadside with his other palm bracing the flat so it’d deflect the other sword. The impact of Ammianus’ blow smacked the blade edges into Arthur’s hand and slivered it so there was his own blood flowing over his sword. But he ignored that and the accompanying pain, and he ignored the feeling of badly-wrenched muscles in his side, and he charged after Ammianus. Same tactic, only the other man didn’t manage to block in time. Ammianus’ head went flying up into a knot of struggling soldiers and landed out of sight, even the sound of that obscured by the shouting and grunts and clanging of the rest of the valley.

Arthur took a breath.

“Move!” Someone slapped his horse’s flanks and made it leap forward just in time for the spear to miss him. Then Lancelot’s hand was blurring, and the thrower went down clawing at the knife in his throat.

Silver sparked just behind Lancelot. Excalibur snapped down and the man was dead before either Arthur or Lancelot really realized he was there in the first place.

“He saved my life once,” Arthur said, mouthing the vanishing ghost of a memory. “And he knew who I was, and he tried to kill me.”

“I told you it was going to be bad. It’s your own fault—” Lancelot sounded like he was on the verge of either falling apart or falling in on himself.

Arthur grabbed the man’s arm and squeezed it, wishing there was time for more, but the battle was still going. “It means you’ll live. I can live with that.”

He shouldered his horse past Lancelot and plunged into another cluster of Romans, sword flashing up and down. Behind him there might have been a moan or a silence; either way, Lancelot was beside him a moment later, watching his back.

* * *

Gawain stood up from checking a body for life and then jumped back a step. And after that, he smacked Tristan. “Where the fuck have you been?”

For a moment, Tristan couldn’t even find a way past the shock. His cheek was numb—and then it was blooming with pain, and his gut was cold. “Galahad?”

“He’s fine, but he dislocated a shoulder because he went looking for you and wasn’t paying attention and—” Lack of air stopped Gawain’s rant and he wheezed, bending over. Then he sighed. “Sorry. Look, don’t blame yourself too much, because he should’ve known better than to charge at that angle.”

The relief actually made Tristan sway a little, and even when he’d gotten himself under control, his skin still felt cold. He chafed his hands and looked over Gawain’s shoulder, trying to figure out where they would’ve taken Galahad; the orders were kill enemy survivors and bundle up their wounded, then ride off as quickly as possible, since they’d left the main camp inadequately protected to risk this strike. “Too much?”

“Do blame yourself for not saying where you were going, or when and where you’d be back.” As mild as he generally was, Gawain was not a man to cross. And that was forcefully evident in his glare at Tristan, and how hard his hand landed on Tristan’s shoulder. “You usually do.”

Which was true, because he liked having someone to return to and it didn’t make sense for them to not know, since then they couldn’t expect him. But he’d been preoccupied by all the new developments and so he’d reverted to his old habits. Much to his regret now. “I—”

“Am going over there—” Gawain pointed “—so Galahad will stop annoying everyone within range. All right? Good. I’ll be over in a bit; I just have a few more to check.”

Before Tristan could answer, the other man had moved off and was leaning over, ax in hand, the next corpse. But then, Gawain had said all he’d needed to say, and he wasn’t the kind of man that padded his words. And Tristan wasn’t the kind to question a clear meaning, such as how Gawain had just implied forgiveness and acceptance and familiarity in a few short sentences.

So he turned and walked to the group of people to which Gawain had pointed, and along the way, he came across some interesting company. It seemed that Guinevere was not completely informed about the Sarmatian hierarchy, because she gave him a flirtatious smile. “I see by the blood that you took your share.”

“I did,” Tristan agreed, keeping his distance. While he was impressed by her skills, he was also not in a position to be blinded by her considerable charms, and so he could keep his eye on the edge she had beneath them. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

She was quick and observant, he noted. Instead of taking the surface compliment, she heard the undertone and gave him a second, sharper look. “I’m here to kill the same people you are,” she finally replied, tone stripped of its ornamentation.

“I believe that. But you seem to have other interests as well.” Now Tristan could hear Galahad’s raised voice, though he couldn’t discern what the words were. Going by the tone, probably cursing. He relaxed a little more, and then he was amused at the irony in that. “Play with the Romans all you want, but don’t think you can do the same to us.”

“Then watch who you treat as hostile,” she shot back. “It’s hardly fair to expect someone not make themselves as safe as possible.”

Guinevere whirled and stalked off, her jerky movements a good measure of how deep Tristan had struck. Though once she’d learned a little more, she’d probably not worry so much about him; he only cared if she happened to take advantage of Gawain, since Galahad wasn’t going to be open to that kind of approach. And if she was sincere, and did help…then he might even support her. She had skills and a good brain, and he could sympathize a little with her position as an outsider. As long as she didn’t continue to act like one.

Tristan wiped off the blood on his face and headed for Galahad, anticipation speeding him along.

* * *

Surprisingly enough, Arthur was nowhere in sight when Guinevere finally tracked down Lancelot. And Lancelot himself didn’t even bat an eye when he saw her, which took away the only part of the coming confrontation to which she’d been looking forward.

“If you’re here to gather him up and ship him back over the ocean, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” Lancelot was swiping at the blood on his neck and face, but his hands were just as bloody, so he wasn’t accomplishing much except changing the patterns in which it glistened under the moon. “And don’t fucking blame me. I offered to get him out of here. I _wanted_ him to leave. He chose to stay.”

“I know.” Though Guinevere still wanted to lay the fault at Lancelot’s feet for getting Arthur to that point, but that would’ve cut out Arthur’s own flaws. And as much as he meant to her she refused to canonize him.

Apparently, her lack of assault took Lancelot off-guard. He stopped rubbing the blood into his skin to stare at her. “Then what are you doing here?”

It was possibly the first sensible thing she’d heard him say since they’d met. Not that that was going to soften her towards him, because if she was going to give up any chance at Arthur, she wasn’t going to do so to anything that happened to be willing to take him. She owed him a good deal, and it was enough to make her acknowledge it no matter the circumstances.

Moreover, she still did love him. Even if it wasn’t quite enough to keep them together and healthy that way. “I wanted to check on him.”

“Oh.” The battle must have tired out Lancelot an exceptional amount, because he actually turned his back on her and walked over to his horse. He mounted slowly and started to go past her, as if she wasn’t also mounted. “He’s not _here_ ,” Lancelot said over his shoulder, sounding a touch irritated. “Are you blind?”

“No. And now I’m curious as to why he isn’t here. Considering that here is the cause of everything.” She hitched her leg over the saddle-horn in order to remain facing him. “Do you want him to stay?”

The first emotion on Lancelot’s face was pure disbelief. The second was a gaping contempt, as if she was being so stupid he couldn’t even begin to fathom it, let alone reply to it. “Are you deaf now, then?”

“I know what you said,” she snapped, dropping all pretenses at composure. Normally she would’ve killed herself before allowing someone like him see her unfiltered, but in this case, she’d make the exception in order to get across the point. The damned man didn’t seem to understand anything but a threat—a perfect reverse of Arthur, who seemed to understand nothing but threats.

Maybe they would be a good match, after all, whispered the part of Guinevere that wanted no grounding, no lines to the earth. If nothing else, they were so tied into each other that on their own, they couldn’t strike effectively at anyone but each other. And if together…then they could lash out at Rome, and deep enough to make her recoil.

“I know what you said,” Guinevere repeated, slashing the envy out of herself. Jealousy was a collection of lead weights, and she needed to be light enough to soar. “But he’s staying now, whether you’ll have him or not. He’ll do that.”

Lancelot’s snarl was so violent it nearly twisted him out of the saddle. “ _I know_.”

“So I’ll ask again—do you want him to stay, or not?” 

It was darkly amusing to watch how the answer scraped at the inside of Lancelot’s face and burned from his faces, but it was annoying when he refused to let it out. Instead, he jerked his horse away and started trotting for a group of men gathering ahead of them.

Guinevere hastily followed, and then overtook him to seize his reins. “Do you want him, you irresponsible son of a whore?”

“What do you care? Are you planning to take him if I give him up?” Lancelot fired back, tearing the reins out of her hands. His fingers curled into a fist as if he were going to strike her, but at the last moment, he clamped his hand around the reins. “Because—”

“Even if I wanted to, he wouldn’t have me, you blind nag. But I do care. I care enough to see him have some reward for—even if it’s idiocy on his part, it’s his idiocy and it’s better than most men’s wits. Rome chewed up half of him; I won’t see your land devour the other half to no purpose.” Whatever bound Lancelot from hitting out at her didn’t also bind her, for she had no problem cutting the edge of her hand into the side of his arm. Then she dug her heels into the ribs of her horse and went forward before he could retaliate. “So?”

He had slowed nearly to a stop, hand clutching at the spot where she’d hit him, expression a pulsing sore. For a moment, Guinevere thought she’d overdone it: her hand went to her sword and she braced herself in the stirrups. But then Lancelot closed his eyes, breathed in, and all the violence ready to break out quietly slipped away.

When he finally answered her, he didn’t do so with anger or with resignation. He merely stated the fact that both of them knew: “Yes, I do.”

And then he tugged his horse’s head about and sent it into an abrupt canter, whirling away from her. If she had been him, she would’ve approved of his neat avoidance of any further attacks.

Guinevere took her own deep draught of air and stared up at the sky, giving herself a moment to forget about all that kept her eyes earthward. She wondered at how it could change, from land to land and from season to season, and yet remain the same in essence. Distant, beautiful, peaceful…the dream-mirror of the world.

Then she laughed a little, because if that were really the truth and not merely an illusion of the eyes, then the sky should be much more bloody and rent and ugly. And it would be alive, with all the pains and joys that brought. 

She turned her gaze back to the men gathering, picked out someone she recognized, and rode towards him.

* * *

“I know it’s going to be a problem. I know it’s not the time for this. And I know that everyone’s going to say I’m just doing whatever I please, without regard for anyone else’s welfare.” Lancelot seemed to have his speech all worked out and memorized, carefully hitting each word so they punched through the air.

After the first try, Gawain gave up and let the other man get through all of it. He did listen, but he also sat down on his bed and started to scrape at the dried blood in his beard, which was beginning to itch. His arms were heavy as boulders and about as unwieldy, and his mind wanted to sleep.

Come to think of it, he spent a lot of his time like that.

“…but I’m not giving this up. Everything else—fine, we’re finally at war, I’ll be too busy to bother with that. And you realize almost all of that was because I was bored with the waiting. But this isn’t the same.”

Gawain pressed his hands against his eyes and attempted to sort out his head. He’d come to several conclusions in the past few hours, all of them fairly important, and so he was having a hard time differentiating between them. “Lancelot, you can have him. I’ll back you. All right?”

“Because—what?” When the man stared like that, nothing but wide startled eyes, Gawain could almost see why people let him get away with so much.

“You don’t have to convince me. I saw him fighting—he killed Ammianus himself. And by the way, if you two are going to completely forget about the rest of the battle every time you catch sight of each other, maybe we should have you fighting at different times and places.” The pieces were slowly pulling together in Gawain’s head. He’d been either by Arthur or Lancelot for the duration of the battle, and he’d seen enough to persuade him. Moreover, he’d had to keep watch on Galahad while his cousin had fumed and ranted and searched for Tristan, and he’d learned something there as well.

It appeared that Lancelot still didn’t understand. Well, Gawain wasn’t up to much of an explanation, but he supposed he should try, if only to get the man out of his tent.

“Look, I grew up with you and Galahad. I never thought he’d manage to keep someone around. I never thought you’d want to have someone to keep around. It looked like you two were going to be lonely jackasses trying to make up for that by pretending you didn’t care.” Gawain shrugged and let the obvious speak for itself. “Tomorrow we could all be dead. So today, if it’ll help, then have it.”

Lancelot started to reply with something sharp, but apparently cut his own tongue on it. He winced, looked away, and thought for a moment. “I think I owe you a few—”

“Just get out of here and go back to being your old annoying self,” Gawain sighed. “It worries me when you start acting considerate. Then I wonder what else I won’t be able to predict anymore.”

The other man rocked back on one heel and held that pose, then snorted. Something similar to Lancelot’s familiar carefree attitude filtered into his laugh. “You need a wife. Shouldn’t bother mothering us hopeless souls.”

“I’m looking. But first, I’m going to sleep. We’re meeting in two hours to decide what to do next, right? Then I’ll see you in Gorlois’ tent.” With a grunt, Gawain swung his legs onto the bed and stretched out, uncaring of all the filth and gore still crusted on him. He desperately needed the nap, and besides, he’d be moving around again so soon that it should just flake off of his armor.

“Not Guinevere,” was Lancelot’s parting mutter. “Plenty of beautiful _Sarmatian_ women without having to resort to her.”

Galahad’s opinion was that Lancelot was afraid of having her as a relative, because then he’d have to be nice to her. Which was probably right.

Anyway, there was hardly any reason to worry about that; Gawain still had no idea how he and the Briton woman had gone from conversation to rolling around on the floor—which probably accounted for his newfound relaxation, even after the fighting—but he was fairly certain the _why_ had been the maps. Well, there hadn’t been much marked on them that Guinevere didn’t already know, and if she just wanted to memorize the land, Gawain wasn’t going to begrudge her a few looks. He considered it a more than fair trade, but he wasn’t expecting a second visit. She didn’t seem to be the type that would need more than one look, and he wasn’t the type that was used to getting more than one.

Besides, he’d have no idea what to do with—

“Gawain?” First a slender, fine-boned hand lifted aside the entrance flap, and then the rest of Guinevere gracefully followed. “Did I wake you?”

One. Two. Three. The sky didn’t collapse.

Rationality stepped forward. “Isn’t this a waste of your time?”

“What? Oh, that?” She perched on the edge of his bed, hauteur amusingly like Lancelot’s. On the other hand, it might’ve been nothing more than like disliking like. “If I made it easy for every man, I’d be nothing but a simple whore. Sometimes it’s better to keep them waiting a little.”

“So I’m _not_ your host for the evening.” Gawain closed his eyes again and worked on pretending she wasn’t there. He was too tired to have yet another serious conversation.

But not, as it turned out, too tired to ignore her sliding in beside him. “Lancelot still hasn’t gotten around to finding me a place where I wouldn’t have to listen to him and Arthur. So if you don’t mind…” her voice briefly hesitated “…I just want to sleep. And hear about Lancelot’s embarrassing childhood, but that can come later.”

If Gawain were another man, he might’ve felt manipulated and offended by that. But he wasn’t, and so he could hear the genuine fatigue in her voice. And he could think about how similar people’s various goals really were, and consider this one harmless. Even helpful, because he knew he didn’t have the energy to keep up with Lancelot. “Up in two hours.”

“An hour and three-quarters,” she murmured, breathing already slowing down. “One quarter to tell me about Lancelot’s bad habits. And I’ll leave you and that cousin of yours—Galahad—completely alone in regards to other matters.”

“That sounds fair.” Then Gawain rolled over and let himself slip away.

* * *

Galahad hit the secretive bastard. And then he winced, clutching at his injured shoulder. Dislocations weren’t the worst that could happen, but nevertheless they weren’t any fun to put back, either. Not to mention that for the next couple of days, he’d have to worry about whether the damned thing was going to pop out again.

Tristan, idiot that he was, had his hand floating over Galahad’s shoulder as if he thought the slightest touch would break it.

“It’s annoying, not serious. Like you,” Galahad muttered.

A moment later, when Tristan still didn’t get it, Galahad wrapped his good arm around the man’s neck and pulled him down. He felt one shiver, and then warm breath nuzzled into the tender spot behind his ear…while the hawk made a whining cry and rustled her wings.

“Go to sleep, lady,” Tristan muttered. His head turned into the fingers Galahad was slowly drawing through his hair.

“Same to you.” Galahad stayed awake long enough to catch himself a mismatched, warm-wet kiss, and then he promptly sank into oblivion.

* * *

It was an urn of unglazed pottery, built with an eye to sturdiness and none to aestheticism. Amid the nest of brightly-colored rag strips that had padded it during the journey from Britain to Sarmatia, it was a dull, ugly lump. But it had done what it had been meant to do, and it’d done it well, so to Arthur’s eye, it had nothing for which it needed to apologize.

“Small.”

Arthur startled, then turned to look at Lancelot. The other man had stayed beside him all through the fighting, but the moment the moaning of the wounded had overtaken the clashing of swords, Lancelot had been off. And he’d avoided Arthur all the way back to the main camp, though his fellow knights had been considerably warmer in their reception.

“My father died in a campaign a week north of my—of my childhood home. And my mother was trapped in our burning house—it was hard to find anything that I knew was from her and not from ashes of something else.” The expression on Lancelot’s face was unreadable, so Arthur twisted back around and started to rewrap the urn. He was careful especially around the thin neck, wrapping extra layers there until the entire thing was more cylindrical than curved.

The bed dipped as Lancelot sat down behind him. Palms spread flat against Arthur’s shoulderblades, pressing down so he almost missed the tremble in them, and then Lancelot laid his head against the back of Arthur’s neck.

“There’s only one or two bone chips of hers in this.” Arthur leaned down to tuck it securely with the rest of his things. When he sat back up, Lancelot’s hands had slid to his waist and the fingers were digging grooves so deep he thought he could feel them wearing into his bones. “My father wanted to be in Sarmatian soil most of all; he would’ve liked to be buried near the Wind’s Needle, but he didn’t care too much as to particulars.”

“Suppose you got that from your mother’s side, then.” Though Lancelot kept his words short, the roughness in them still was audible.

Very slowly, Arthur reached down and took Lancelot’s hands off of himself. He kept hold of them while he turned around to meet the man’s eyes. “What I had from her was knowing that, despite all that’s dark in life, one could still find something worth following. She wanted to be buried where my father was, and never mind that it wasn’t her land.”

Lancelot blinked back a veil of wetness, then looked down at the fingers he was squeezing around Arthur’s wrists. He slowly tilted forward till his cheek touched Arthur’s jaw, paused and breathed, and then he moved his head so their mouths just covered each other.

“Stay,” Lancelot murmured. “Stay and live, stay and die—I can’t promise you anything, except that this is where I’ll be.”

“And so will I.”

It’d been a long time since Arthur had seen peace. And it had been never that he’d had it inside of him, but he had it there now, and nothing he could see outside would shake it.


End file.
